Righting Wrongs: (Re)Defining the Problem of Black Representation in U.S. Mechanical Engineering Study

The discourse concerning racial representation within U.S. engineering education has been long-standing; however, after George Floyd was murdered many engineering organizations shifted to pledges of anti-racism. Mechanical engineering (ME) departments within postsecondary education were among many to make anti-racist commitments to improve their educational climate for Black students, but none adequately acknowledged their role in perpetuating anti-Black norms within the professional formation of engineers. This omission of past wrongs and swift revision of discourse is not minor; in fact, it represents a tradition of misrepresentation and neglect regarding the racial history of the discipline. The goal of this chapter is to examine the historical foundations of engineering education and make connections to the insidious ideologies that established the culture of pedagogy, content knowledge, and professional practice within ME, which has resulted in the maltreatment of Black students and engineers. Black people have long been blamed for their own subjugation within ME using rationales of substandard academic preparation and poor work ethic. Such arguments lack sociopolitical context and have been invalidated, but still predominate discourses on racial representation within ME. In contrast, this chapter will deconstruct the epistemologies of Whiteness that undergird the ME ecosystem using the framework of hegemonic Whiteness. This analysis will demonstrate how the formation of ME study and practice in the USA ignored ancient mechanical innovations by peoples of the African diaspora and overlooked the correlation between technological innovation and Black subjugation throughout this nation’s history, resulting in a construction of ME that innately excludes and dehumanizes.