Since white males are 29 percent of the labor force, excluding women and minorities is analogous to flying a four-engine airplane with only a single-engine.




Philip Emeagwali
interviewed on May 29, 1997 by Jim Romenesko (romenesk@PioneerPlanet.infi.net) for the June 1, 1997 issue of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press.

Since white males are 29 percent of the labor force, excluding women and minorities is analogous to flying a four-engine airplane with only a single-engine. Without affirmative action, this nation will be performing at less than full capacity. We must concretize the cost discrimination imposes on white America so that more whites would change their attitudes.

The more important question is: Where will computer technology be without the contributions of scientists of African ancestry? The answer requires an understanding of the relationship between the subjects of series, calculus, differential equations and computers.

Series was invented and published 4,600 years ago by a black African mathematician named Ahmes. If Ahmes did not invent series, 17th century Englishman Isaac Newton could not have invented calculus. Without calculus, 19th century mathematicians could not have invented partial differential equations. Solving differential equations governing ballistic missiles and weather forecasting are the original applications that motivated the development of the first electronic computer.

There are many other black pioneers who are misrepresented as whites. The world's greatest mathematician, Euclid, never stepped out of the African soil but is misrepresented to be of Greek ancestry. His book, The Elements, is the second most reprinted book in history and second only to the Bible. Where will we today without the Africans that invented geometry?

The greatest mathematician of the Middle Ages, Fibonacci, was born and raised in Africa but misrepresented as an Italian. Serious mathematical study was introduced into Europe by Fibonacci who wrote in his book Liber Abaci (The Book of Abacus):

All that was studied in Egypt, in Syria, in Greece, I investigated very carefully. I wanted to write a book of 15-chapters with nothing capital left out and this I did so that the science might be easily understood and the Latin people should no longer be deprived of it.

The term "chemistry" or "chemetic science" is derived from the word "chemet," the ancient name for Africa. Chemet means the "land of the blacks" and the word chemistry means the "black man's science." Similarly, we can show that black Africans of the Nile Valley civilization are the original pioneers in the fields of astronomy, medicine, and architecture (Great Pyramids).

The laws of science do not discriminate by revealing themselves to some ethnic or racial groups. On the contrary, employing scientists from diverse background advances technology at a faster pace. Harvard University physicist Gerald Holton observed that:

We might capture novel or unusual insight into the understanding of the universe from people who have different life experiences or come from different cultures --- simply because the larger the pool of well-trained and hard-working people, the larger the probability of novel and unusual insights.

Although black people are underrepresented in today's science and technology, science is the gift of black Africans to the modern world.

The effect of abolishing affirmative action and diversity programs is that it will exclude women and minorities from making scientific discoveries and it may take four times longer to discover the cure for AIDS and save millions of lives. In other words, the benefits of affirmative action far outweighs the inconvenience to a few white males.

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