I'm Not Sure What This Means

Ok. I'm not sure how to begin this. The point is that I was completely caught off guard on Friday when a student journalist (Diya Chacko) called me to ask for an interview for the Daily Trojan, the USC campus newspaper. I was caught off guard because when I asked what it was about she said that I was the most cited Black Mathematician of 2004. (Photo left by Alicia Anderson. See below.) So I was caught off guard for a number of reasons. The first was because I was not aware that I was a Mathematician, but I later learned that the term meant someone working in "mathematics or a related field at American Universities or Colleges". Close enough. The second reason was stronger: Who is counting, and why?! So I did a bit of Googling (as you do) and learned that the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education seems to do this! There's actually an article about it in one of their issues, and there is a web link here. Apparently they gathered data about (the?) 96 such Mathematicians (above meaning understood) and I'm at the top of the list with 65 citations for 2004. I've no idea how they count this at all, but, ok. That's not what causes me concern. (While Googling about this I also found that this has been picked up by a number of other sources (many of which are new to me): the Daily Princetonian, the M.A.D. (Mathematicians of the African Diaspora - I like that acronym) website at Buffalo, a website called Africanamerica -where I'm mentioned only a few scroll strokes above Zadie Smith! Wow, that's a first!- and the blog the Diary of a Black Mathematician - a real one. I've no idea how I missed this buzz about me until now.) Anyway, the USC article was written, and it was about more than just the 65 cites, so that's good. They recognized some of my teaching efforts on campus and had rather pleasant and touching remarks from a colleague, Krzysztof Pilch, and Lexi Shiovitz, a student from my Spring freshman physics class. (Thanks!) And I got to talk to an enthusiastic student journalist (Diya Chacko) and hang out with an equally enthusiastic student photographer (Alicia Anderson, who took the excellent photo top left, and 87 others in 20 minutes), which is always fun, so what's not to like? (Disclaimer: I did mention that string theory is a candidate model of Nature and still needs to be experimentally tested, and I did tell them that I got my PhD. from Southampton University, and that my work on four dimensional black holes was back in 1996, and I did mention this blog several times, but, you know...editors.) So what causes me concern? Well let me say at the outset that it is very flattering indeed to be congratulated for things such as this, and I recognize that given the appalling state of the representation of black people in academic subjects such as Physics and Mathematics -both as students and as faculty, etc- it is vitally important to keep track of how the current faculty are doing. But I am not sure that it helps to measure us in this particular way. None of these articles seem to bother to mention that it is not completely meaningful to compare citations across subject disciplines like that. So with the appropriate weighting for activity in the field, I could well be at the bottom of the list! But a much much more important omission is any mention of how this level of citation compares to those of people who are not of African descent. Partly because I do not come from the USA's cultural approach to "black issues", I have some disagreement with some of the way these things are done in general: I do not want to be considered a successful Scientist of African Descent. I want to be considered a successful Scientist (by any commonly agreed measure) who happens to be of African Descent. I hope that the difference is clear, and not offensive to my very respected colleagues of colour. In other words, recognize that I've achieved whatever you're recognizing me for as a human being first and foremost, and then feel free to remark upon whether you think this achievement is all the more interesting (and maybe remarkable ...or not) given the several extra obstacles I had to (and still have to) surmount in order to acheive it. On the other hand, I know that I live in the real world. So while I strive to help to create a world where it will be totally unremarkable that someone of my skin colour and background can do well in the "hardest of the hard sciences", I recognize that we are a long way away from that. But I do think that we need to be careful how we use the data that we gather. I'm just not sure it is useful to compare me only to my colleagues of African Descent. And with regards the role model issue (since that is always a factor): Should the next generations coming up be aspiring to be good scientists of colour, or good scientists? I'd hope the latter, and so we should try to highlight how well people are doing on that scale. I'm willing to be argued with about this: Tell me otherwise, with reasons. -cvj