[Moorbey]

Posted Jun 30th 2008 8:00AM by Madison J. Gray
Filed under: BlackSpin
Maybe 2008 is the year that we see black men actively defying stereotypes.

Despite what you might have to say about brothers, and all that you might constantly read about how perpetually dysfunctional we're supposed to be, there are LOTS of us who are making it happen and I don't mean on a stage, in a studio or on a basketball court.

Case in point: Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, an ingenious astrophysicist, is probably one of the few closest people we've got to Einstein in this world. A damn smart man, and I could listen to this brother for hours. Why? Because he says things that are actually worth listening to. ...
Tyson's official title is Frank P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at The American Museum of Natural History. Does that sound over your head? Well let me translate: this is one bad ass scientist.

Maybe it sounds like I'm jocking this guy too much, but how often in American history do we really get to give black men praise, not for entertaining us, or dazzling us with athletic prowess, but for using their brains? Not enough.

Now don't get me wrong. If a kid shows a talent for athletics or entertainment, he shouldn't be discouraged, but every single day, I see a kid who doesn't realize that he or she could be the next Dr. Ben Carson, Mae Jemison, Reginald Lewis, or Kathleen Battle. I can't say I hate much in this world, but I certainly hate wasted talent.

For the most, part we only know about Benjamin Banneker and George Washington Carver as far as their contributions to science, but there are many more out there that never get their props, so Tyson is a good place to start.

If you look at his bio, he comes from the same background as many of us. He was a kid from the South Bronx, whose interest in science began when he would look at the moon through binoculars from the top of his apartment building. Yeah, I'm sure the other kids hated on him and spat venom, but he still got encouragement to follow his dreams into the stars and it did him good.

How many of us black folk had dreams like this when we were kids only for the other kids -- or even our families -- laugh us into forgetting about it? That's one of our most significant problems, if it's intellectual or if it defies conventional (or religious) wisdom, it ain't black enough.

Fortunately, Tyson didn't let anyone define who he was and kept his dreams alive.

From there he pursued a science-oriented education and was driven by his curiosity about the universe. He went from Bronx High School of Science to Harvard, University of Texas at Austin and finally Columbia University on a path of enlightenment. Eventually he worked his way to the top of Hayden Planetarium and even on to PBS where he has his own show, NOVA Science Now -- as far as I'm concerned the realest of all reality shows.

Check out this audio interview with him. I mean this brother is so deep, it's scary. Whereas most of us approach science with what we see on Star Trek, this dude lays it out in a critical thinking fashion.

Q. How long do you think it will be until we colonize other planets?

A. Do you know that Antarctica is balmier and wetter than the surface of Mars? Yet I don't see people lining up to build condos in Antarctica.

Now that's science!

What I mean is that useful science has always dealt in practicality. Tyson is a brother saying and doing things all of humanity can use, rather than well-publicized leagues of negroes who say nothing very loudly, and I think he and others like him deserve much more notoriety among black people.

Yeah, 'Lil Wayne may have sold more than a million albums the other day, but can he tell me when the next asteroid is going to hit the planet? I don't think so.