Even Worse Than it Looks: The African-American Male Life Sciences PhD

Summary: Statistics reporting Blacks can be misleading. Be sure to ask about African-Americans (Black US Citizens), in addition to all Blacks. The data are probably even worse than presented.

Given the already low percentage of Black Life Sciences PhD graduates, it's difficult to imagine that the picture could get any bleaker.

It does...

..hate to say I told you so.

The NSF also provides a number of pre-built tables, some of which are available here. For example, Table 24 shows the percentage of all Black PhD recipients per field for 2010. Keep in mind that this table shows the results for ALL Blacks. The picture is even worse for African-American males (Black male US Citizens).

...if you're still whirling in disbelief, enter the following into the NSF SED Tabulation Engine:

Outer: Race & Ethnicity (standardized)
Row: Citizenship (survey-specific)
Column: Gender
Filter: Academic Discipline, Broad (standardized)=LIFE SCIENCES