High Price

students called the university due to its low number of black students and faculty, despite being located in a town with a large black population). Walt couldn’t understand why I would spend so much time with white men like Rob and Don. I had to explain that I needed support from those who’d forged the kind of career I wanted. No matter how different they seemed from us, they were actually more like us than their colleagues, I argued. Walt couldn’t wrap his head around this thought.
    Indeed, research shows that having a white male mentor is advantageous to women and minorities in science. When a field contains few members of historically excluded groups, having a mentor from the privileged majority can open doors. In one study of sociologists, for example, blacks with white male mentors were found to be more likely to be on track for tenure and to get a position at a major research university, which led to publications in better quality journals and greater academic productivity. 1 For me, both in college and graduate school, having a variety of mentors with different experiences and strengths made a massive difference. I was happy to receive all the knowledge and insight I could from wherever it was offered.
    Of course, making good use of multiple mentors means recognizing their specific expertise: a white male mentor may give useful advice on science but be less knowledgeable or effective in advising on the race-related challenges a black student faces.
    Even after I’d found my three mentors, however, I hadn’t completely left my old life behind. Money was a constant issue. None of the jobs I had paid more than six dollars an hour and once I got involved with Rob, I was spending more and more time at the lab, which initially didn’t pay at all. When Melissa and I broke up in November 1989, I needed to find a new place to live because she had paid half the rent. A woman who ran a record store that specialized in reggae allowed me to stay in her store for a short time, until she hooked me up with a Jamaican named Dwight, who wanted a housemate.
    Dwight was a cool brother with long dreads that he wore covered with a hat. He was also a high-level marijuana dealer: he had operations in Miami and Brooklyn as well as Wilmington. I didn’t care that he was in the game; his being a drug dealer was not my concern. I wasn’t about getting into anyone else’s business. I needed an affordable place to live and he had one. He knew that I knew but it wasn’t something we talked about. Besides, his position within the drug game was high enough so that he himself never possessed marijuana. So I didn’t have to worry about our place being raided by the police or robbed by rival dealers. He was a low-key, mellow guy who had also worked in construction. Well, he didn’t actually work in construction; he just kept his union dues current to give the appearance of maintaining legitimate work.
    About ten years older than I was, Dwight soon became impressed when he saw me studying and getting involved in lab work. He saw my vocabulary improve as I practiced. He soon thought I was some kind of brainiac and began bragging about me and my scientific future to his friends. Meanwhile, I was living way above my means, maxing out the multiple credit cards that were then being sent to college students as though the companies were giving away money. When the bills inevitably came due, I first pawned the saxophone that I’d once tried unsuccessfully to learn to play. Then I asked Dwight about getting in on the dealing action.
    He flat out refused me. In the way that people in the life often look out for those who have alternatives, he didn’t want me to get dragged down. He said it was ridiculous for me to even think about and that I was too smart for this. He did, however, begin letting me stash money for him. Sometimes I kept it in the room where we housed the rats for my research. I don’t know if he even really needed me to do that or if he was just trying to give me a way to feel like a man who wasn’t reliant on him for charity. Still, he helped me get through my crunch and was another man in my life who refused to let me give up on myself. (Dwight himself, sadly, was later shot to death in Brooklyn; I don’t know the exact circumstances of his killing.) I slowly got out of debt and managed to stay that way. With Dwight’s help, I managed to keep my nose to the grindstone.
    Melissa and I had broken up in part because we