Browsing Reddit today I came across this post relevant to the recent social turmoil resulting from yet another gruesome, unbelievable, and entirely undeniable public killing of a black person by the police in the US: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/gvc7k9/black_lives_matter/

In addition to all the usual disturbing statistics, these facts stood out:

"...fewer than 100 black women in the US have received PhDs in physics.

This lack of diversity is unacceptable and actively harmful, both to people who are not afforded opportunities they deserve and to the STEM community as a whole. We cannot truly say we have cultivated the best and brightest in our respective fields when we are missing the voices of talented, brilliant people who are held back by widespread racism, sexism, and homophobia."

Indeed, quite possibly the person that somehow holds the key to any number of scientific, including health, challenges is a black woman.

But there's more, "Only 4% of medical doctors are black." This means we all suffer. It means many of the best and the brightest among us are not being given the chance to benefit society.

And these demographics don't just apply to black people, "Hispanic workers make up 16% of the US workforce, 6% of STEM jobs that require a bachelor’s degree or higher, and 4.4% of medical doctors."

In a country that is increasingly multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-cultural, pretty much multi-everything, these are not good numbers, and it's more than a negative reflection on equality. It means we are failing to thrive as a society. When plants fail to thrive, they eventually die. The world is full of dead empires.