Charles and his wife were driving on a road outside of Pasadena, Texas, when they saw a billboard that said "Welcome to Pasadena, the Heart of the Ku Klux Klan."
The year was 1980. His family moved to the Houston area to be near the Johnson Space Center after he was selected by NASA to become anastrologer. After serving in the Vietnam War, he moved away from the area where he and his wife had grown up. He remembers the image of a Klansman riding a white horse shaking him.
We had been away from it for so long that we had to pass a sign to get our lights on in the house.
After a stint at the agency that included four flights to space and more than 700 hours on board the Space Shuttle, Bolden was appointed by President Barack Obama to become the first black NASA administrator.
The astronauts who actually go to space have remained overwhelmingly white despite that landmark appointment.
More than 350 people have participated in the NASA program. Despite the fact that African Americans make up 14 percent of the US population, only 15 of them have been black.
NASA has launched or enrolls 17 Asian and 16 Hispanic astronauts, including partnerships with international programs. Asian people make up seven percent of the US population, while Hispanic people make up 18 percent. Only one of the astronauts has been of Native American descent, which is a fraction of the total.
NASA continues to struggle in a serious way with diversity in its astronauts. It is a major problem for a part of the government with unparalleled power in shaping the practice and narrative of scientific research and space exploration.
The way the system has developed and was built is what people don't like about it.
There have been attempts by NASA to highlight its history of inclusion, but the fact is that the famed Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions were 100 percent crewed by white astronauts.
NASA seemed to be heading in the right direction after the debut of the Space Shuttle.
About 10 percent of the astronauts it launched in the 1980s were people of color. When NASA launched more than 100 American astronauts, the number grew to 11 percent. In the 2000s, nearly 20 percent of the astronauts it launched were people of color.
During the 2010s, those figures started to decline.
The number of astronauts NASA sent to space plummeted after the Shuttle was retired in 2011. The share of non-white astronauts fell even in the smaller pool. NASA didn't send any black astronauts into space between 2012 and 2019.
How the agency's diversity efforts will fare during the 2020s is an open question.
Not to mention private space tourists, we have seen a hopeful increase in astronauts across the board. The only person of color among the five American astronauts who got launched into space was Victor Glover. The 2020s are pacing the 2000s for NASA's most diverse decade for its astronauts.
Even 20 percent is a long way from the 38 percent of Americans who aren't white. NASA's astronauts won't reflect its population until the gap is closed.
Black and brown people are underrepresented in the world of business, scientific and engineering industries, and many other areas of public life.
In ways that are invisible, the inequalities and more compound. Minority students are discouraged by the perception that science and technology doesn't have room for them. There is a persistent racial wealth gap in the United States, and families with less financial resources are less able to fund the kinds of advanced education and internships that can lead to a position in the competitive aerospace industry.
The vicious cycle is caused by the fact that people from poor and minority communities are less likely to meet and connect with scientists or astronauts, meaning that their career trajectory continues to feel abstract and unachievable.
At the end of the day, it adds up to an apparatus that perpetuates an unjust status quo even though many individual players at NASA and beyond want to change it. Minority kids look at NASA's astronauts and see faces that don't reflect them, or even reflect America.
The system is not broken,Bolden said.
A non-diverse workforce presents a certain kind of danger. It is something that the military is aware of and one that NASA should be aware of as well.
He said that if we are to compete with global adversaries like China or Russia, we are not going to be able to beat them with the same old thinking.
NASA said that not many people of color apply to the program.
The percentage of black and brown people that apply to be NASA astronauts is very small, according to a spokesman for the agency.
According to the data provided by the agency, 3.8 percent of the 6,113 people who applied to be a part of the 2013 astronaut class were black. Black is one of the eight astronauts.
The application allowed people to not reveal their race. According to NASA, 25 percent of the 18,300 applicants chose not to. Only 2.6 percent of the applicants were black. Only one of the 12 who were chosen for the class, Jessica Watkins, who is scheduled to leave for the International Space Station in a Crew Dragon this spring, is Black.
NASA could potentially take a radical action. Move. The agency's geographic locations are a significant reason why it lags in attracting minority talent.
NASA’s locations in the Deep South “without a doubt” play a role in the problem, Bolden said. From Houston to Cape Canaveral, these locations have historically been inhospitable to people of color and other marginalized groups. And while the agency has itself been relatively welcoming to its workers of color, the same can’t be said for its surrounding communities.
There weren't many Black engineers and scientists when I arrived in Houston in 1980.
These places have been a part of American history for a long time and still are. There is no doubt that a racist legacy is still very much embedded in the fabric of the region, despite the fact that some of the most blatantly discriminatory practices have faded with time.
It also doesn't help that NASA often uses the same talent pools at Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, along with prestigious institutions like MIT. The result is a mostly white, male workforce.
The agency has been reaching out to historically black colleges and universities, as well as other more diverse educational institutions.
NASA is now looking into HBCUs and other minority institutions that serve indigenous and Pacific islanders for talent.
There is a long way to go for the agency. There is a lot to be hopeful about with the upcoming Artemis missions, which will include the first person of color and the first woman on the Moon.
Watkins is set to become the first black female to spend months on the International Space Station when she arrives in April. The previous record was set by a black woman in space. It won't solve the agency's diversity problem, but it is an important step in the right direction.
It doesn't make a difference when it comes to talent when it comes to color and gender. I think Jessica is going to be the same.
NASA plans to land the first person of color on the moon.
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