Note: I'm an African-American man who works in Silicon Valley as a researcher in an AI lab.

I believe there are a number of reasons why there are so few African-Americans in STEM.

1. Many of us grew up in low-income households that don't have the same amount of resources to devote to education that higher-income households do. Many of us also grew up in households where the parents don't have college degrees. Roughly 70% of African-Americans are born to unmarried parents, and many African-Americans live in single-parent homes; being a single parent is very challenging. Many low-income housing areas are unfortunately crime-ridden. It takes a lot of determination for parents to raise their children under such circumstances.

2. Having a successful STEM career means being able to master technical subjects that require a considerable amount of time and focus to study, such as mathematics. Consider the type of mathematics and science preparation needed to enter a top-tier undergraduate STEM program. Now compare that to the education opportunities that are available at most American high schools, especially those located in the low-income neighborhoods that many African-American high schoolers attend. Without the influence of a really good teacher or mentor, or without the influence of a parent who has earned a college degree, how would a student learn the study skills that are necessary for obtaining a STEM degree? I'll give a personal anecdote: despite my perfect high school GPA (4.0 unweighted), my history of being in gifted programs, and having taken seven community college courses (including three computer science courses), the transition to attending Cal Poly San Luis Obispo as a computer science major was a rough one for me because I didn't know how to study for rigorous university-level STEM courses. I basically skated through my entire pre-university experiences; I didn't know what it was like to actually have to sit down and truly study something that I wasn't already passionate about (I was able to teach myself programming and Japanese, but I found it difficult going through my physics textbooks). Despite this, I stuck with it at Cal Poly and ended up eking out a 3.0 GPA, which was just enough for me to enter a PhD program, though not my dream school of Carnegie Mellon. Unfortunately I knew of many students who either dropped out or switched to less demanding majors.

3. So, despite the odds, you end up with a freshly-minted STEM degree and it's time to take on the world! Well, the challenges aren't over yet. Imagine being the first in your family to have a white-collar job, as was the case with me. Who is going to give you advice about how corporate America works and how to succeed under that environment? Imagine being the only black person in your office, or sometimes at the company? Thankfully I grew up with a lot of immersion in various cultures and so I'm comfortable with being the only black person around, but that doesn't always mean that the people I work with are comfortable around me. I personally haven't experienced discrimination at the workplace, but I know other people who have. There are also non-work stresses; there's taking care of other family members, there's dealing with the police, there's dealing with dating, which I've found difficult in Silicon Valley. These challenges could mount up and have people think of alternatives.

I believe that any solution to addressing the shortage of black people in STEM will involve addressing all three issues above. Starting from #3 and working my way up to #1:

- We need to retain the black professionals in STEM that we already have by providing mentorship opportunities that will help us navigate our careers and our personal lives.

- For university students, we need to teach them how to study STEM and what it means to truly master a topic. Mastery of the foundations is important for research and developing technologies.

- Our high schools need to be more rigorous. By the time a high school student graduates, the student should know how to study at the college level, and the student should be able to be competent in a wide field of subjects, not only STEM, but also English, history, economics, government, and a foreign language. Middle school and elementary school should also be made more rigorous in order to prepare students for high school. Ideally the level of competence of a high school graduate should be equivalent to an associate's degree. Alan Kay once quoted an English woman who said, "[y]ou Americans have the best high school education in the world -- what a pity you have to go to college to get it!"

- Finally, we need to address the social problems mentioned in #1, though unfortunately I don't have specific solutions regarding these problems.