A Presidentress who Looks Like Me?

When I was in middle school, I thought the whole idea of people of color needing older people of color as role models was bullshit. I was like, I can model myself on anybody!

There weren't any older people of color that I connected with in the role model sense because my parents live pretty segregated lives, and in school and other settings class differences overpowered racial similarities.

It wasn't until I was in a setting with a LOT of queer people of color 10 and 15 years older than me, who actually shared some of my beliefs and life experiences, that I actually got what all the fuss about having "role models" was about. Somehow, seeing those people living lives I thought I might like to live, defining themselves outside the roles and behaviors I saw in the few Asian people in my town, embracing their race to mean what they wanted it to mean...was liberating. And empowering. And amazing. I carry it with me to this day.

I'm reminded of this experience at Brown, where suddenly I am surrounded by a LOT of women who are scientists and engineers and mathematicians. It's not that I never saw a woman who was a scientist, or that I didn't think I could be a scientist. It's that I never saw a large group of them who were anything like me together.

I have not had any epiphany about my secret desire to study biochemical geophysics. I'm not really a science person. I think if that were my passion, I would have pursued it regardless of the genders of the people I saw in science around me. It would just have felt normal because it was, the same way years of being the only girl in woodworking and cabinetmaking classes felt perfectly fine.

But seeing these women who pause to comment on cloud structures, who actually go and do out the statistical analysis for the housing lottery, these women who enjoy these conversations together and are energized by each others' enthusiasm for questioning and appreciating the ways the world works...It is strangely liberating. And empowering. And amazing.

Maybe I am just a follower who needs to see a lot of people do something before it looks good to me, but science actually looks kind of cool and accessible and easier. And I'm not sure I would ever have seen that if I hadn't had these women to shake up my image of science and scientists and how science is applied in life. Maybe this is why there are fewer women in the sciences, etc.-- because right now only those who are passionate about them or who are encouraged in them early on pursue them as careers, while the girls like me who like to be with the crowd, well, follow the crowd.

What are your thoughts on the "role models who look like me" idea?