A Bolt of Lightning

April 4, 2007

Sometimes truth is a curse, or worse, cause it hurts.
It’s like drinking sand when you’re dying of thirst.
And we don’t want to hear it. Our worst fear is to look in the mirror,
so we lie to ourselves to keep it unclear.

Excerpt taken from Like This, Like That
By Ason, AKA Big Sonny
Beatmart Best of the Submissions

While the details of our upcoming educational initiative are not quite ready to be released to the public, I thought it would be good to begin laying the groundwork on what I am attempting to do. So first a little history.

This project of ours stems from some research I was doing back in the summer of 2000. I was finishing a seven year stint working with a Christian leadership discipleship school called The Master’s Commission - A Generational Call to Character. On one hand I loved working there, and enjoyed my job immensely. But there was a part of me that always wondered about what I was doing in Spokane, WA, when I had a passion for African-American youth. I knew at some point I wanted to go back home to Portland, to work with the kids in my old neighborhood…but how?….and why…and to do what?

Obviously I was searching. I had prayed and asked God to speak to me about what he wanted me to do. And then I came across this quote that cut me like a knife:

It’s no secret that racism, especially institutional racism, is alive and well in the world. And last I checked, there isn’t a surplus of black professors of computer science here in the States. In addition, I am no stranger to the plight of African-American achievement within our educational system, which was the reason I was doing the research in the first place. So there really isn’t any obvious reason I would be so shocked reading that quote, other than its frankness. But today, almost seven years later, I still find myself moved when I read this quote, and not even because it is true. Quite frankly, it might not be. Consider this:

• First of all, Emeagwali, clearly suffers from an inflated view of himself, as well as the awards that he has won. There are even those that consider him to be a fraud.
• Secondly, this quote is 10 years old, and hopefully there would have been enough progress that this would no longer apply. Sadly, I believe it still does.
• Most importantly, whether or not you believe this quote is or ever was true, you cannot deny that the issue Emeagwali is addressing is a valid one. Dr. Scott Williams, Professor of Mathematics at The State University of New York at Buffalo confirms as much, though as he says, the logic used to arrive at those conclusions, was “extremely confused.”

You see, the question of whether this quote is true or not really didn’t cross my mind. What did was:

1. If not for racial discrimination, how many more black computer science professors might we have today?
2. If those people aren’t teaching computer science, what are they doing with their lives?
3. Here’s where the lighting bolt hit me: I was one of those people.

You see there was a time in my life when all I wanted to do was study computer science. I was writing programs when I was 12 years old. At sixteen, I wrote a screen capture program in dBase (anybody still remember dBase?) for the hematology department at a local hospital. I was an incredibly smart kid, who’s one ambition in life was to become a computer programmer. I scored high enough on the SAT to qualify to be a member of Mensa and I only took it once…when I was a junior.

Not only that, but I love to teach. I was exposed to teaching when I first started helping people solve their technical problems, be it with sound systems, stereo equipment or computers. At 17, I became the youngest lead instructor at Saturday Academy Outreach Program, teaching discrete mathematic concepts to junior high students. Most recently, I am managing the Intel Computer Clubhouse in Portland where one of my primary responsibilities is to teach young people about technology. Teaching is more than a joy to me, it is a passion.

So what happened? It sounds like you would have made a perfect professor of computer science?

Long story short is, I didn’t go to college directly out of high school (More on that later). I eventually ended up pursuing theology instead of computer science as a primary career choice, which is how I ended up in Spokane in the first place.

One of the things I learned during my time in Spokane is how God speaks to me. God uses the things that irritate me to get me to focus on something. So once I began focusing on this quote a number of things began to get clear rather quickly.

• The continuing educational gap between black students and their counterparts is an injustice worthy of my efforts, as well as something I am passionate about.
• Serving young people teaching mathematics and technology was something that I was extremely good at.
• Spokane has an extremely small black population.
• I would be able to maximize a return on the talents God had given me, if I was in an enviroment with more black people.
• Knowing all this…staying in Spokane meant I was being an unfaithful steward of the technical skills God had blessed me with.

Ouch.

Big Sonny was right…sometimes the truth hurts.

(to be continued…)

Share This

Posted in Personal, Research, The Rationale