The leaky pipeline for Black academic chemists

As a devote member of the ACS, a lover of C&EN, and part of the 1.6% I think you've missed the mark on this one. First, I've seen this retweeted and shared all over social media and it's clear that people do not understand the numbers. The very first value should be the proportion of college-age people in the U.S. who are black, which is larger than 12.3-13.4%. This would prevent comments I've seen that blacks appear to be overrepresented at U.S. colleges. Second, there needs to be some qualification of these numbers because I've also seen people misinterpret the values as an indication that the number of people receiving advanced degrees would naturally continue to decline and miss entirely that what you are saying is the proportion continues to decline until it's about 10 fold less than the representation of blacks in society. Finally, when I saw this infographic first posted I was excited to hear what people are doing about it, but was disappointed to see that there was no discussion surrounding this. No discussion of why we are at this point. No discussion of what work people can do to change it. Overall, this is a big disappointment and if you look at 85% of the comments surround it, this has done nothing to open people's minds.

When I evaluated the percentages you presented in this issue of C&EN, I was astonished at the higher than average numbers for people of color.
If 7.9% of black students obtain a bachelor's degree in Chemistry and then comprise 4.5% that obtain a PhD, would this suggest that over 57% of black chemists with a bachelor's degrees obtain the PhD.

The proportion of black chemistry professors (1.6%) at the top 50 schools seem right in line with their population.
Black population is 12.3% of total population with 1.6% of the top 50 schools have black chemistry professors.
1.6/12.3 = 13 %.
Does this suggest that in terms of the total population, that 1.6% is actually more like 13%?