Henson wrote a memoir about his work, called “A Negro Explorer at the North Pole”. Henson’s legacy is an inspiration to geoscientists, as polar field work continues to be heavily dominated by white males. ​

From the above stories of Black geoscientists, some patterns emerge that may be useful for informing our journey toward anti-racism. Perhaps the most obvious one is that all of the academic Black geoscientists mentioned here have devoted significant time toward increasing diversity. However, the academic institution of geoscience places little value on diversity work. Although efforts at the surface have been made to improve this, such as including diversity statements in faculty applications and tenure packages, faculty are still predominantly hired and rewarded for their research. Furthermore, the faculty that are in charge of assessing these statements are often not trained on how to best evaluate them. If geoscience is committed to increasing diversity, then it should place real value on diversity work. “Integration of outreach and engagement efforts should be tantamount to publication record on a CV. Too many non-Black scholars have ascended the academic ladder without substantive contributions to diversifying [science] and societal justice, and this is unacceptable”.

Another pattern that emerges is that most of the renowned Black geoscientists reviewed here went to HBCUs. A study done in 1991 showed that HBCUs enrolled 20% of Black undergraduates in America, but they awarded 40% of college degrees earned by Black college students. This shows that HBCUs not only enroll a lot of Black students, they retain a lot of Black students. The study also shows that 75% of Black people with a doctorate degree went to HBCUs and 50% of Black faculty at predominantly white institutions received their bachelor’s degrees from HBCUs. This shows that we need to increase recruitment from HBCUs, and that mentorship and peer-support from other BIPOC are instrumental for the perseverance of BIPOC students. We need to increase BIPOC representation in faculty and leadership positions, and strengthen campus resources available to support BIPOC.

The Black geoscientists described here have been incredibly successful at enhancing diversity, which suggests that BIPOC are the most effective at increasing representation from BIPOC. One of the reasons for this is that white cultures often have different community values than BIPOC cultures, so white geoscientists may be unaware of the most effective ways to attract BIPOC to the field. For example, studies have shown that geoscience is not a field with much value in the Black community. It’s not even a household word. "If you're not in a field where you are directly [perceived as] helping the Black community, you're ignored. It's like being a minority within a minority”. In the context of today’s greatest issues in society, we can harness the unfortunate fact that BIPOC are disproportionately impacted by the negative effects of climate change. This is a topic that BIPOC are significantly more concerned about than white people. In the words of Ayana Johnson, an influential Black marine biologist: “to white people who care about maintaining a habitable planet, I need you to become actively anti-racist. I need you to understand that our racial inequality crisis is intertwined with our climate crisis. If we don’t work on both, we will succeed at neither. I need you to step up. Please. Because I am exhausted”. We can bring anti-racism into our classrooms by teaching about the connection between topics such as climate change and the communities that are most impacted. We can reshape outreach and recruitment activities to emphasize the relevance of our field to racial justice, rather than the usual main attractions, such as field work-- which have greater appeal to white people. 

Lastly, while BIPOC are the most effective at increasing BIPOC representation, the burden cannot be placed on BIPOC. We can't make the one or two faculty of color in the department chair the diversity committee every year. There is so much literature already, and so many effective practices that have been led by BIPOC. We don't need BIPOC to keep doing all of the work. We need the loudest people, the people with the most power doing the heavy lifting. That's white people. 

There is extensive literature on the benefits of becoming anti-racist and the ways in which we can become anti-racist. What remains largely missing in the literature that pertains to transforming geoscience toward an anti-racist paradigm is context for how we ended up in a passively racist paradigm. It is still exceptionally well hidden, but I have recently learned that overt racism is intimately connected with the foundation upon which geoscience is built. It has simply been erased from our textbooks. 

Here I will share some sobering stories about the fathers of geoscience, who undoubtedly made incredible scientific contributions to our field. However, the rippling effects of their white supremacist ideologies - which are hidden from their legacies -  are still embedded in our field today. How do I know this? Racism was not simply a political ideology that resonated with them. Many of them abused their scientific positions to provide "scientific" justification for racial discrimination. Many of them published their "findings" in their textbooks and included it as material in their lectures. It was a science to them, and they were publishing their scientific theories. 

However, we cannot simply erase the works of these men to remove racism from the roots of geoscience. We cannot free ourselves from racism until we stop idolizing white supremacists. And even then, there is still much work to do. But this is a start. 
​

When left the post-slavery South to join the University of California, he was horrified by the increasing efforts to hire and admit Black faculty and students. He wrote in his autobiography: “the sudden enfranchisement of the negro without qualification was the greatest political crime ever perpetrated by any people, as is now admitted by all thoughtful men”. His racist agenda is becoming increasingly publicized, resulting in the removal of his name from buildings (e.g. renaming of LeConte Hall at UC Berkeley in 2020). However, the rippling effect of his white supremacist views are profound. LeConte himself proudly claims in his autobiography that his racial theories he lectured about were “then unpopular, but are now acknowledged almost universally by thinking men”.

Recent work has celebrated the accomplishments of the Native Americans who contributed to Powell's work, but the stories are shared in a collaborative light. The white supremacist ideologies of Powell continue to be forgotten. Amplifying the achievements of BIPOC is certainly a step in the right direction toward anti-racism. However, continuing to idolize white supremacists will always prevent us from being anti-racist. ​