This little ditty was published in the UCSB Daily Nexus around May 18 1991 for something I marked nexus general. That year would make me about 21 years old and clearly (with an anger that would be incomprehensible to my fellow students who proudly assert that they enjoyed their time at UCSB) I was celebrating my graduation as physics major by celebrating all the other “Blacks in the Sciences at UCSB.” Of course none of my anger is made serious in my writing here. Since I was a serious student of Monty Python (and the flying circus) the influence was on me to be very, very silly.
So dig: take your average Joe Schmo watching the Cosby Show saying, “Is not it cute, Horatio, to have pretty African-American folk posing as doctors and lawyers in a new, colorful twist to Ozzie and Harriet?” It is a kind of media non sequitur in a one-dimensional system of logic totally dependent on one variable: ratings, which linearly transforms into advertising revenue. But this so-called non sequitur has been financially successful in the media world—now what about the real world? Is there a section of professional society that is exclusively of color? Now in the media mind, these people exist only if enough television viewers want to watch them; in the post-modern, “politically correct”, tie-die, Birkenstock, refuse-to-wear-bra-or-shave-legs mind such beings theoretically can exist. But, since here in the raging tri-counties, a land where such beings of color are few and far between, what we need are statistics and hard facts.
Since I am a lazy bum and will not bother to look up any statistics, nor do research, I can tell the reader about my own personal UCSB experience. I think Tracie Hall, one of the finest poets on campus—and I say on campus not as an insult to her—, is a pre-law major and I am very confident that she will be a professional of color. There is this cute African-American couple on campus—and I use the term African-American not to be “politically correct” or not to annoy readers who can not stand words with too many syllables in them but to be accurate—and the guy is a math major. His name is Carlos Pile. The young lady of the couple, Ymonne Johnson, is a mechanical engineering major. Let’s see… Gerome Waters: he recently earned a degree in physics—he’s a black guy too. There is this other guy I know as well but I can’t remember his name—he looks just like that dark complexioned leader of the drug ring in the movie New Jack City—he graduated with a degree in computer science and something else like math. As for myself, I am graduating with Bachelor of Science in physics assuming that I don’t fail Art History 1, and Physics 141, which is an optics class—I scored a sickening 26 out of 100 on the optics midterm last week. I forgot to write a few equations down on the cheat sheet.
Well anyway, the reason why I am writing this article is not only for the $15.00 but also in response to an article written by a Nexus staff writer who said not only there were too few blacks in the sciences—which is true (this I capitalize to avoid being misquoted in the opinion section)—but also the person said that there were no—id est none—blacks in the physics department. In my desperate attempts to be loved by all people of Santa Barbara—in my great desire to curl up in the chancellor’s lap and be stroked like a kitten—I must cease being the Invisible Man. By the way, to the chancellor: nice sunglasses. Hello UCSB. My name is Bryan. I’m black. I majored in physics for five years. I hope to graduate in June. Now, goodbye.
Wait a minute! Not so fast. I must admit a fib: I did do a bit of research. Freelance reporting, an interview with Ymonne Johnson of NSBE (National Society of Black Engineers). It appears that they have thirty members. The majority of the members are not freshmen and 6 members are graduate students. Here is a list of names, that will be edited out of the final copy, of some of the members:
Elise Anderson | Computer Science |
College of Engineering |
Kesha Banks | Chemistry | College of Letters and Science |
Darryl Bryant | Computer Science |
College of Engineering |
Renee Fernandez | Mechanical Engineering |
College of Engineering |
John Fisher | Computer Science |
College of Engineering |
Andre Fleet | Electrical Engineering |
College of Engineering |
Rana Gilliam | Computer Science |
College of Engineering |
Ray Hechavarria | Computer Science |
College of Engineering |
Kenneth Henry | Chemical Engineering |
College of Engineering |
Monte Jones | Computer Science |
College of Engineering |
We cannot forget that wild Mechanical Engineer, Osman, who once routed a Viking Army with a jaw bone of an ass. I wonder: did the Vikings really have an army? Seems to me they should only have had a navy… a marine core perhaps…
So it appears that the media world cannot be all wrong so my apologies to the Huxtable Family and the National Broadcasting Company. …There are far things better dreamt of blah-blah-blah as Earth than heaven than what it is bro, Horatio… In post script, I must say that I would not have bothered to write this stuff if the text was made by the general, whining riffraff (let them eat cake), but no: it was a Nexus staff writer. There has always been a tradition of accuracy and honesty unsurpassed by the Nexus—to whom else can one come to get the actual lyrics to the Gilligan’s Island theme song?
I can only hope the hope of the captive that the words of this article do not belong to The Regents of University of California! For what I’m writing about now, check out my Blog.