Did you know that chemistry changes with skin color? At least that's according to one young

chemistry professor at Rice University who is teaching a new class beginning this semester called

Afrochemistry, or what she calls the study of black life matter. Chemistry professor should

not try to make jokes. Hey everybody, I'm Steve Green with Bill Whittle and Scott Ott, and this is Right

Engel, brought to you by the members of Bill Whittle.com. And this is a supposed science class at

Rice, a serious research school. Scott, I decided to look into this a bit because the only chemistry

I ever took was my junior year of high school, and I was terrible at it.

I mean, I had to cheat my way and beg my way into getting a C.

It was just like this for me.

I just, I didn't get it.

But I didn't remember there being any kind of a racial aspect in chemistry.

So I decided to look up the chemistry of melanin.

And it turns out that the most common form of melanin has two forms linked to 5-6 dihydroxyindol D-H-I and 5-6 dihydroxition. And this is why, you know, I had to crib and charm my way into getting a

C in this class. It's just, these are words I don't know talking about things I don't understand,

and I couldn't be made to care less. But even reading this Wikipedia entry, I still

couldn't find anything about race in there. But according to the teacher,

this is Dr. Brooke Johnson at Rice, she will teach students to apply chemical tools and analysis

to understand black life in the United States, along with her personal reflections and

proposals for addressing inequities in chemistry and chemical

educations. Other questions she'll look at include what does it look like to do science

on one's own terms? What does justice look like in chemistry? And of course, how does our

society shape the science we do?

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