What it was Like to be Pushed out of Bioengineering as a Black Woman

To set the record straight, I was always working harder than my white classmates. Doing research by my second semester, spending hours a week in student organization meetings, and doing health literacy work that would’ve been considered “volunteering” had it not been my own family I was working with. The standards were double. The bar was high, yet as I pole vaulted over every obstacle, acceptance never came. I felt the need to write this reflection several times throughout my graduate career, but it is only now where the sting has subsided enough for me to do this. (Shoutout to my therapist, academic trauma is real y'all.)

The Forms of of Violence

While I started plotting my escape rather early in my college career, I didn’t realize that it was because I was being forced out. Being gaslighted, isolated, and microaggressed were acts of institutional violence that made me anxious everywhere I went. Whether it went unchecked from peers or faculty, it was the same stressors over and over. My nervous system was overstimulated and left me erratic at the invisible trauma.

Credit Overdue

Now my experiences with my classmates were initially isolated, but forced assimilation quickly changed some of the perceptions that people had about me. At graduation, there was a special announcement that a beloved student had received one of the most prestigious scholarships for graduate school. In reality, two students had won it, but they didn’t mention my name until one of my labmates had said something. The undergraduate program director had great relations with the students, buying the upperclassmen drinks and sharing space with the younger ones. However, that warm elder camaraderie never reached me. He wasn’t cruel, but he was quite distant in many of my interactions regardless of how kind he was.

When I entered the university, I told my academic advisor that I was going to get a French minor, major in Bioengineering, and study abroad. By senior year, my advisor had said how impressed she was that I had done all that I had set out to do, but it wasn’t expected. I wasn’t sure if this a microaggression, but I guess the crying in her office at my annual appointments combined with the high dropout rate for the major and my scarce AP credits had convinced her that I was not going to stick it out. I studied abroad 4 times, with the last experience of being the first student ambassador to two South African universities in my program. I even wrote a small grant proposal to have the hosting students come to our school, but the matter was “taken out of my hands” by a diversity dean who has no true intentions of enriching the students abroad.

Exploitation

In the ambassadorship, I had independently designed and conducted my own research experiment while also being taken advantage of both the diversity office staff and the study abroad staff. I was told to leave my information for parents to call me about their concerns, create panels of previous cohorts, and even get the diversity dean coffee. There were paid positions to do all of those things, and I was not in any of them. This abuse had worked its way into my project when my work had been overlooked and considered vastly insufficient without serious editing- until I actually told the engineering education department what it was. It then became clear that many of my words were going to be used for editing a grant proposal, without any request to actually work with me. I got repeatedly harassed for the word document version months after my internship ended up until graduation. The staff even threatened to remove my scholarship the last semester because I did not want to meet with the dean about it. I do not know if the pdf document was used for anything, but I would not be surprised if my work was still used without due credit. Both the bioengineering camp and the study abroad program had made the diversity office within the school of engineering my worst tormentor.

When We Say Protect Black Women, We Mean It.

The worst experience I had studying aboard was when I decided to do research at a biotechnology program at a school in Israel. For those of you judging that decision, I had at the time decided that I was undereducated about the conflict with Palestine and knew that oppression was something I was used to navigating. However, without the resources I have in this country, it wasn’t enough to make me feel safe. Police brutality of Africans mixed with not seeing a single Black face on campus made me worry for my safety. When I got caught in the middle of a protests on a weekend beach trip with other students, the lack of concern for social issues became salient in my stay. I began asking local students their opinions on the conflict and paid attention to the difference between Muslim students and Jewish students. During a Ramadan dinner, a Muslim student told me that “everyone was bad” and the situation wasn’t good. Because my physical and psychological safety were at threat, I told the study abroad office that I needed to leave.

The one study abroad director available had a zoom meeting with me where she said that she would be on vacation after I stated that I did not feel safe where I was. She did not make sure I got back safely and only asked how things were weeks after the trip when I worked as an intern in the same office space as her. If I were a white student, I would’ve been taken seriously, and the program would be reevaluated. I was made aware by one Palestinian student back at home that they wouldn’t even have been accepted in the program. The rockets going off 30 minutes away, cockroach infestation, and “conflict” had never bothered the 4 white students sent abroad. They were mild inconveniences to their stay and thus rendered as unconcerning.

Retaliation

I was told by a Black women mentor not to discuss my experience working at the bioengineering camp, as it could lead to retaliation by a white man by much power than me. This advice was out of pure concern and awareness of reality, but I find that I suffer most when I don’t speak up for myself.

One of the worst incidents I ever had was when I decided to work for a bioengineering camp that often took Black high school and middle school students from underserved communities. I was warned during the interview that some of the students were from wealthier backgrounds and have offended other students in the past. It was unspoken but implied that the environment was not a safe space for Black students. While my optimism skimmed over this detail, the disrespect for Black people entered the program as warned. It was not the other schoolchildren, but in fact both the other college counselors and the director that had hired me. My experience with constant microaggressions were so bad from the start that I had continually told the program director how my health was negatively impacted. Eventually, I left after the three camps the counselors agreed to do were finished. However, there was more work that the director asked us to do without additional compensation. Later, I found two articles written about the program. One of them was for a liberal newspaper and only mentioned the director as if he were responsible for any of the work done. The other was for the school and it had mentioned the 5 other head counselors and nothing about me.

Subjugated Voices

Now I know this experience isn’t exclusive to one race, class, or gender. (For the record, two Palestinian bioengineering students told me their frustration with the erasure of Palestine from our program conversations, while we in fact had a research study abroad program with a school in Israel.) What it is though, is a highlight of how intersecting oppressions successfully work to subjugate certain voices. In leaving the program, I looked for public health opportunities but found both formal and informal rejections. In one case, I was told by a Black tenured woman in faculty to schedule a meeting through the staff, only to have the staff say that I would not be a good fit.

Racial Dynamics Have Real Health Consequences

Now that I’ve gotten my degree, there are some things that the school cannot take away from me. Yet, it does not obscure the reality that there are growing racial disparities in preventable disease, wealth, and biotechnology access. The way race operated in the program suggests that bioengineering is fueling the decline of Black health. While I have moved away from such unsafe spaces, I am now back to studying them.

My research is dedicated to unraveling the way race operates in bioengineering. I wonder how oppressed people gain agency in these conditions. Do we accept a solid job and reinforce racial dynamics, or are we actively working to change them?

With this being said, there are many great experiences I had in the bioengineering program. But I would be remiss to pretend as if racism didn’t shove me out. Against the tradition of graduate student culture, I now care for my nervous system in a way that not only as changed my biomolecular operation, but protects me from harm. I have relaxed my stance on promoting little Black girls from the hood to be bioengineers. If they don't assimilate, they risk violence. (Although violence is a form of assimilation too.) The action should come from academic institutions to remove these forms of violence instead of halfway committing to diversity. I write about these experiences because we need to do better.