by Katrina Spencer
Twenty-first century social media platforms are offering new forms of visibility and reach that scientists have not enjoyed before. While celebrity culture often keeps actors, singers and royals in the public eye, the hidden figures testing theories, boiling liquids in Bunsen burners and graphing equations are accessing new channels to showcase their professions.
This includes the likes of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson whose TikTok account boasts nearly 6 million followers and other Black men in lab coats who wear goggles, concoct formulas… and shake a tail feather in response to infectious beats and the latest, trending dance challenges.
“I want to make a cannabis soil next year,” Justin “Jules” Giuliano said.
Giuliano, 32 and based in New Orleans, is a Black man working in STEM — the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math fields — where Black men are underrepresented and sometimes unseen. He’s the lead soil researcher for Rosy Soil, a potting soil company that, as of this writing, sells a suite of seven soils: house plant, cacti, seedling, plant food, biochar booster, aroid and orchid. In a soil studio, he tests a dynamic list of compilations and with his company, expects to release a herb soil, a garden soil and a liquid fertilizer this year.
“Half my work is killing plants,” he said.
Despite the essential work he carries out to make Rosy Soil profitable, there is a risk that much of his identity could remain invisible to customers.
TikTok, Instagram and other platforms, however, are allowing creators with backgrounds like Giuliano’s to reach across borders, informing the public that Black men can thrive in the sciences, too.
While educational attainment for Black Americans has grown in recent decades with 27% of Black adults aged 25 and older earning a bachelor’s degree, only 9% of STEM-related jobs are held by Black people according to the Pew Research Center.
“We desperately need more Black men in science,” said André K. Isaacs, an associate professor of chemistry at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, who is Black, Jamaican and queer.
With over 653,000 followers on TikTok, Isaacs, 44, has gained some notoriety on social media for learning and performing choreographed dances on TikTok with the college students who work in his chemistry lab, creating under the handle @drdre4000. His dancing skills have made him a fun and welcome presence in and outside of STEM via social media’s algorithmic powers, and dozens of people from all over contact him, many expressing gratitude to him for making both a Black and a queer face visible in the sciences.
“People don’t realize how much visibility matters,” Isaacs said.
Recruitment of Black people to the sciences is not the sole obstacle to the diversification of the body of people in the sciences. Retention of Black faculty in the sciences is a national challenge, Isaacs said. While he has taught in his college for 14 years, he is the only Black person within his institution’s entire science complex.
Programs like Holy Cross’s Future Faculty Institute aim to develop people of color who are academics for faculty roles, which can help to address the dearth of diversity in countless disciplines within higher education and the Black mentorship Isaacs says is needed. However, Holy Cross is able to sustain such an investment because of its status as a private institution. The Trump administration, on the other hand, has made an effort to eliminate programs that value and prioritize diversity at public institutions, going so far as to rescind funding meant to forward inclusion.
In a climate that is closing some avenues for the sciences, social media platforms remain as a tool for communicating iterations of what is possible.
TikToker Jordon King (@kidflamesss), 25, for example, who has over 62,000 followers, appears in many of his videos with two-strand twists in his natural hair and a set of flashy, gold-toned grills. While such swag was common among rappers from the 90s and early 2000s, King is part of another rarefied group.
He’s an environmental scientist based in Florida who studied marine sciences in New York.
“I only knew like one other Black person in the major,” King said, “and it’s been like that throughout my entire academic career.”
He cold pitched scores of professors by email in search of internships. One took him on, which led him to collecting water samples in the Everglades, a flooded grassland in South Florida, testing for organic carbon. He now works in the commercial realm for an environmental consulting company that collects ground water and soil samples on land meant to be developed, testing for contamination.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” King said. “You don’t have to look a certain way to accomplish things.”
While many education tracks can lead to work within the sciences, not all education tracks come with the proper supports to nurture the talent and spirits of Black men.
Social media creator Joseph “Joe” Sampson, 24, enrolled at the University of Texas in Austin to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry. While a student, he studied electrochemistry, which involved measuring currents produced from chemical reactions.
But not all was smooth sailing. Sampson described an environment of overwork, an inability to care for himself amidst his schooling’s demands and an impatient advisor.
“I didn’t enjoy the research process,” Sampson said.
After almost two years, he decided to leave his program. He now makes videos designed to train others in navigating the math needed to succeed in chemistry.
“I fell in love with content creation,” Sampson said. Forty-four thousand people follow his efforts on Instagram @thatblackchemist. His focus now is in growing and selling the courses he’s developing for his audience and making his materials lucrative.
He hasn’t entirely ruled out more traditional roles within the science industry and keeps his eye on the market, but is circumspect about withdrawing from his former program.
“I didn’t see a single job I wanted that required a Ph.D,” Sampson said.
While not all science leads to the lab, much training in the sciences is routed through higher education.
Choosing an institution where a breadth of mentors is available in a geography that has a large Black presence were keys to success, Isaacs said of his journey towards a Ph.D. White professors mentored him and their investment was essential, he added.
“The task of supporting Black students does not fall exclusively on our community,” Isaacs said.
For more, follow @joelbervell and @doctor.darien on TikTok, @ebereillustrate on Instagram and #BlackinSTEM.