(Voice of Paul) – A few days ago, I wrote about the overwhelming presence of Black people in the just concluded 2024 Olympics in France where people of African origin represented the majority of caucasian countries, and in that article, I argued that Africans should also be given a seat in other walks of life including business, science, energy, community leadership and finances.
This is because representation matters especially for young people who are looking everywhere to find their role models. If Black people are excesively represented in arts and humanities like basketball, football, music, drawing and painting and not so well represented in other fields such as space technology, renewabale energy, bioengineering, we will create a generation of young people who would be limited to thinking that their highest aspirations are limited to the previously mentioned arts and humanities field.
As much as I am aware that Black children have limited educational and economical opportunities due to institutionalized racism that has limited the earning capabilities of their parents, getting into leadership positions and raising our collective voices will be a good starting point to change the narrative positively.
To this end today, we are celebrating a wonderful Ethiopian teenager – Hemen Bekele who invented a soap that could help cure skin cancer in the near future. This feat made Time Magazine name him Kid of The Year. According to Time Magazine, Hemen “his accomplishment: inventing a soap that could one day treat and even prevent multiple forms of skin cancer. It may take years before such a product comes to market, but this summer Heman, who’s 15, is already spending part of every weekday working in a lab at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, hoping to bring his dream to fruition.”
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a Black child become the next Michael Jordan, Tupac, or Pele. However, at the same time, there is nothing wrong in having a Black child become the next Elon Musk, Sam Altman, or the next Jeff Bezos. This is because children learn from what they see other people do, so if we have a disproportionate amount of Black people in sports and not in science, technology, or innovation, we as adults or parents may be directly limiting the potential of our Black children. To this end, I would urge parents to understudy Hemen Bekele and add him as a potential role model for their children.