A great movie indeed however it uses the white savior trope gratuitously. The scene where Kevin Costner’s character lets Octavia Spencer’s character into the mission control room never happened in real life.
I didn’t read it as Costner being a “savior”. She had all the agency and action. She just needed someone to give her a fair shake. I should go back and read the book though because I’m curious about where they bent the story for dramatic purposes.
Yeah, that trope is regrettable. Don't forget the entirely fictitious scene where Costner's character "ended" segregated bathrooms by taking down a "whites only" sign.
There are other... issues with the movie. At the end, Katherine Johnson is shown running between her office in Virginia, and Mercury mission control, which was actually in Florida. This has to do with her checking computer calculations of orbits for John Glenn's flight -- something she actually did do, but it's depicted as being done in minutes, and it actually took her more like a week. (Computers of the time were damn slow by modern standards, but they were still faster than that!) It was not a big secret that the Redstone rocket (a souped-up V2) couldn't put something as heavy as a Mercury capsule into orbit. And so forth.
The movie's a good story, but if you want actual history, read the book.
Octavia Spenser plays Dorothy Vaughan, the programmer. Katherine Johnson was played by Taraji Henson.
The movie deliberately side steps history in order to tell a story. For example the accomplishments of the three primary characters occurred during unrelated timelines. The three primary characters likely knew each other in passing but in addition to the different timelines they worked in unrelated departments on unrelated projects. Also Katherine Johnson took 3 days to confirm John Glenn’s landing coordinates within the week of launch. The movie reduced that to an hour effort holding up launch for dramatic effect. John Glenn really did ask for Johnson to personally verify the numbers though.
There are three supporting characters that are real life figures: Al Harrison played by Kevin Costner, Jim Johnson played by Mahershala Ali, and Olke Krupa who played a fictionalized version of a real engineer mostly accurately depicted as Mary Jackson’s real life supervisor. The rest of the supporting cast were largely stereotype figures.
Considering the historical reality I did not take the white characters as white saviors at all.
No offense to Salmon Chase, but the bill denomination your face shows up on is not proportional (even logarithmically) to one's importance or worth as a human being
It’s a gesture that doesn’t literally cost anything but can make blacks feel appreciated and some sort of justice, a symbolic one. And yet, some people’s ego won’t allow for that. They have nothing to loose and yet their ego is freaking out.
Becoming a NASA engineer in those days must have been extraordinarily challenging. That Mary Jackson, a black woman, succeeded in doing so in a society, and a professional culture (engineering) dominated by white men (nothing against white men, am a white man myself, just pointing out an objective fact, please put your pitchforks away) speaks to her talent and the grit it took to achieve what she achieved.
Probably not to be honest, she deserves the merit she is getting for the work she did. However, the Apollo program in the 60s at it's peak was 4% of the US government budget compared to 0.5% today. The federal government was had a fire hose full of greenbacks aimed at NASA so I'd assume they were hiring huge numbers of engineers directly, and also indirectly through all the aerospace/defense manufacturers who were working on the space program while also simultaneously getting huge contracts for designing ballistic missiles.
NASA has a much smaller budget today so I wouldn't be surprised if you've got to display much more merit in college or your career to get selected as an engineer.
NASA seems to have started a pattern of naming things after people featured in movies, rather than those who contributed deeply to its achievements. Re-naming the Dryden Center to the Armstrong Center appears to have been part of an unfortunate trend.
If only Neil Armstrong had accomplished something significant outside Hollywood, perhaps then he would be worthy of having a building at Edwards named after him, is what you're saying?
(he is a particularly bad exemplar of the point you are trying to make)
Dryden was much more important to NASA than Armstrong was. Armstrong was lucky to be assigned Apollo 11; he was not the best test pilot (having crashed an X-15 due to his own recklessness).
If they were going to pick people who greatly contributed to the success of the Apollo program, they should have picked Houbolt.
If only Armstrong had accomplished something that made up for overshooting the runway and scraping the paint on the bottom of an experimental aircraft, perhaps then he'd be worthy of having a building at Edwards named after him. I cannot imagine what sort of act might erase the stain of that kind of universal infamy.
I dont know if feeling threatened but aware this person’s contribution was not the reason for the naming but the fact that black people were supressed. It’s a generous move but not highly meritocratic. People might have a problem or two with that. I want to remind them we dont live in a meritocratic society anyway and the powerful snatch the merit away like a giant magnet.
It will naturally bruise some egos and pump up some other ones and appear to make a bit of justice. The question is, will black americans be treated as second class citizens in 10, 20, 50 years from now?
> I want to remind them we dont live in a meritocratic society
The reason I love the sciences is that in general, people are more meritocratic in those circles compared to others. I've found especially in scientific academia that people are far more meritocratic compared to other disciplines. This also applies at science/engineering companies. No, not at all levels (the more business-y you get, the less of a meritocracy it becomes). But usually team-leads, senior engineers, etc. rise because of merit. Always exceptions, but in general. Much more than as an accounting firm where you rise because you know somebody who knows somebody.
Unfortunately, as time goes on, I've seen academic circles in sci&eng, and especially tech companies (and silicone valley in general) become much more interested in stay relevant, keeping up with social trends and movements, and appearing progressive. You see this with all the FAANG companies calmoring to be the first to speak out against some injustice or another, or be the first to take a stand on Their Platform(TM).
And with this, the meritocracy has slowly declined. You don't rise in a company because you're a skilled engineer - you can rise because you're a token minority. Or because you're the most outspoken on a social injustice and can see a way for your company to solve it (sorry, profit from it). You can be rewarded because you were the first (insert random minority here) to solve a problem or do something that plenty of other people had already done. Rather than celebrating scientific advancement, we're now celebrating the type of people making that advancement. What next, the first black woman to clone a GitHub repo? Let's name the GitHub HQ after that.
People who come to surface are either genial or narcisistic prize seekers. A lot of white people worth mentioning were forgotten because others trampled on them.
Don’t be so sure it’s so meritocratic, thats just a myth
Most Nobel prize winners to date have been white. Would you say the majority of them sought out the prize? I've read about many of them, and most seem to have just had a great discovery that was awarded on merit. There will always be outliers that do things for the awards, but it's not a generialisation I've seen in the sciences. Should we start giving more Nobel prizes to black people just because of the color of their skin, or should we continue giving the Nobel prize to objectively high achievers?
a lot of Nobel Prizes in the sciences just go to the high-profile Professors that lead projects, and not to the grad students that do most of the labour.
Just how do you think the Nobel committee decides which work to look at?
I don't think they need to be meeting racial quotas for prizes, but my guess is that there is a lot of work to be done in the system that promotes and nominates candidates and those systems in place that decide who and what gets published.
You sound like a man who thinks they diserve recognition yourself and seem to be jealous. Check out your ego, you might become a more beautiful person if you shed some of it
Not at all. I have achieved very little in my life, and will mostly likely spend my life reading about the great achievements of others. I enjoyed my time at university seeing the success of others and helping where I could, and I enjoy my quiet job where I can come home and forget about it and spend time with family.
You made a very big assumption about me, based purely on my preference for working environment and social environment. There is nothing jealous about wanting to see people rewarded based on merit.
The parent poster presented a series of arguments, and in your response you made nothing but ad hominem atacks. That adds nothing to the discussion, and only serves as a display in pettiness. If you have nothing of value to add then please consider not adding anything at all.
As an actual scientist, no, science is not particularly meritocratic or objective. The current scientific world is highly catered towards people that can afford to devote their 20s and 30s to a low-paying job. Because of in-group dynamics, it also maintains the existing population make-up, which is predominantly white or Asian.
Just because you need to sacrifice your prime years in order to succeed, doesn't mean the system isn't meritorious. What isn't meritorious about needing to work hard even if you're talented? Nobody gets a free ride.
If you mean that gifted people should have their livelihood subsidised by the state, then sure, I'm open to exploring merit based scholarships, and society investing more in the sciences and so on. But nobody gets a prize in science without actually putting in the work and achieving something. Though, admittedly we are seeing that less and less. Society in general is becoming less meritorious (participation awards, etc).
The problem is that, in a world where white folks have access to a better social safety net, on average they can afford to sacrifice their 20s and 30s in this pursuit, where others might not have that luxury.
Anyway, I won't waste my time further debating what's obvious gaslighting.
I believe they are referring to the safety net provided by relative white wealth. Median net worth for white families in America is 10x that of black families.
Which means they are much more likely to be able to get support from home or even a home to move back to if things get tough.
It's a lot easier to take the economic risk of a post-grad or post-doc program when you know there is a family with means to fall back on.
Excessive student loans are not a serious issue relative to what many in poverty face. If you don't make enough money to pay your student loans, then you can defer them indefinitely. Or just not pay them. It might keep you from getting rich. But it's not going to keep you from eating.
Doesn't this go both ways? Is it really more meritocratic to choose someone who made a greater contribution if they were given significantly better opportunities throughout their life to achieve it? Can you even judge merit if not everyone is given an equal start?
It is a gross generalization and on an individual basis there is no way to check or know if that ______ person had equal opportunities or they didn’t. The problem with generalized appropriations but localized relief is that unfairness is vividly unbearable to those who are impacted. Imagine if race ______ gets 20 more points in an exam than the rest because they just happen to be a part of a minority. That would be infuriating to a lot of people who took that exam. It’s no fault of ours - this is a natural reaction of all humans. Now, if you’re not taking that exam, that might sound very benevolent. Life is like an exam in some ways. If everyone can take the exam, that would be great. Some can’t even take it, and that where the focus should be - eliminate poverty, inspire people to work hard, and enable people to go to college.
Imagine for a moment - you’re laid off, your family depends solely on you to survive. You’ve interviewed and you think you got the job only to realize that a minority person took it instead only because of the color of their skin. Would you be ok with that(assuming it’s true that there was no meritocracy involved)? This whole thing about improving the world goes into the toilet when your child is crying and you’re looking at your house being foreclosed.
If you’re well off, everything is rosy. You need to also consider other viewpoints.
Now imagine that your great grandparents were enslaved. Then your grandparents and parents suffered through Jim Crow. Then you go through life being slighted and made to feel like an other and anytime you achieve something, some idiot claims it was because of racial quotas and you know some others think it to themselves.
Then you are told that you didn't get the job because now (as of the day the civil rights act passed or the day Obama was elected) we no longer have racial bias in our hiring practices and we are now officially a meritocracy.
So no, I don't see a problem with a system that might slightly favor a minority because I doubt that on the whole they are actually getting any sort of advantage anyway.
Do you have a spreadsheet or something similar of who is more deserving based on past injustices? I'm interested how native Americans are ranked compared to black people?
It's not about comparing those injustices. It's just about knowing our American History and acting with compassion to try to right the wrongs of our past. Both Native Americans and African Americans have a special situation due to their origin story in the founding of our country. But the African American experience is also different from most others due to the more obvious visual differences between a white and black person. It allowed injustices to continue both spoken and unspoken for many, many decades, and still to this day continue both consciously and sub-consciously.
If a white person grew up poor and in a single parent home, they can put on a nice suit and go to a job interview and blend in. And I'm not necessarily just talking about today. But definitely in the very recent past. Which affects the parents of children today and their ability to provide a good education among many other things to make their children competitive.
But talking more about today, it was in the early 2000s I believe where a study was done sending out thousands of identical resumes. Some with white sounding names and others with black sounding names. The white names got 50% more callbacks than the black names. That is an astounding difference and that alone shows that we have a serious problem. I suspect if we did that today, the results would be better, but still not "color blind".
Well at the and of the day you still have to make a choice who deserves what. Since you don't want meritocracy and argue for a compassionate ideological framework you still haven't provided how people are ranked in your system. How does a Russian immigrant Igor who is white, has a bad accent, hardly speaks the language compares to Karim, a successful black business man?
All I see is a group of white people arguing with an another group of white people for power and one is using minorities just so that it can call the other white group racist. No where have i seen minorities ranking themselves in the historical injustice ladder. You don't even realize how patronizing you are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW2LpFkVfYk
The problem with this "97% feels oppressive when you are used to 100%" view is that it's zero-sum. If we treat the racial disparity issue as a zero-sum problem, we practically guarantee the perpetuation of racial inequality and racial animosity. It takes away from individuals of one race in order to give advantages to individuals of another race, and that's rarely a recipe for a just, equitable, unified and harmonious society.
Nobody serious denies that individuals of the latter race were less likely compared to individuals of the former race to win a given prize amount in the lottery of birth, due to historical and ongoing slavery, Jim Crow and systemic racism, war on drugs/black families, etc. Most people believe that the historical and cultural context justifies giving members of the latter race help to "catch up".
The problem lies in the perceived taking away, factual or not: requiring higher test scores for individuals of your race for university admission, hiring less-qualified individuals of another race rather than well-qualified individuals of your race for the good corporate PR, etc. It's obvious that racial handicaps ensure a distributional qualification disparity among the races for accepted candidates. They also make it easy for candidates who don't make the cut, even if they would not have made the cut had they been members of the preferred race, to blame the preferred race for their failure. Whenever an individual of the preferred race makes a mistake or gets a bad grade or review, more people will assume that that person is simply unqualified, even if members of the non-preferred race actually make the same mistake/get the same grade/review at higher rates! As you note, this especially harms qualified members of the preferred race. The racial handicap is fertilizer for racists and sets up a pervasive subconscious racial bias that simply won't go away until the handicap is removed.
I think true progress will only be made once we avoid taking anything away or imposing any racial handicaps and gather the collective willpower to positively support disadvantaged people of all races. We need to ameliorate the stumbling blocks people face to fully developing the skills, personal character, and emotional and familial stability necessary to access opportunity. But this is an enormous task requiring huge amounts of coordination across government and civil society, and doesn't get clicks^H^H^H^H^H^H votes as well as "This One Quick Fix Will Solve Racism in 20 Years! Doctors Hate It!"
>Nobody serious denies that individuals of the latter race were less likely compared to individuals of the former race to win a given prize amount in the lottery of birth, due to historical and ongoing slavery, Jim Crow and systemic racism, war on drugs/black families, etc. Most people believe that the historical and cultural context justifies giving members of the latter race help to "catch up".
I have found that quite a few people seriously DO deny those facts. Look no further than several of the other responses to my comment.
As for taking things away, I agree that handicapping someone due to their race is not good. But unfortunately, society is a bit too complex to completely avoid it. The reality of many racial equality programs is not that less qualified candidates are awarded over more qualified candidates but that in cases where two candidates are effectively equal, preference is given to minority candidates. Because let's be honest, a few exam points here and there or extra-curriculars do not really make much difference.
I totally disagree, how far do we want to go back? Reparations should be provided as funding the schools, better education for poor and impoverished neighborhoods, not some kind of a $4000 check to people of color.
Why not focus on improving communities? I don't want to replace meritocracy with favored treatment one iota, doesn't matter if you were disadvantaged or not.
It is the height of hypocrisy as:
- What about native indians?
- What about asian minorities?
- What about people with disabilities?
- What about people with low IQ scores?
- What about people with low grades in schools?
- What about people that got killed by Genghis Khan?
- What about people that died in the crusades?
At this point, this whole thing lands on a shaky foundation of hypocrisy and favored treatment which is kind of ironic that that's exactly the problem you're trying to solve.
Born with a brown skin? You've got things lined up pretty good for you just because you were born brown. Born with a white skin? You've got things lined up pretty much against you just because you were born white (for the record, I am not white). This is reversing what used to happen. I don't think this is the solution, the solution is to go fix the problems in the first place - higher funding to impoverished schools, lifting up the people from poverty and letting these communities flourish. Colored or not. Instead, Democrats focus on reparations in place for meritocracy.
I want a society that stops talking about race on both sides - the oppressive and the oppressed. Color of the skin should be taught as a matter of historical context, not some kind of a revenge/reparations. Stop wasting energy on trying to undo history, instead focus on the future.
What-aboutism is not a valid argument. And there are programs in place for some of the issues in your list (none of which really stack up much to America's history of slavery and jim crow).
Who said anything about cash reparations or Democrats? Yes, programs should be better funded to make up for the past evils of our society. But what about the people here and now that are disadvantaged due to past evils and the lack of these programs in the past?
It's the pairing of past injustices with the inability to just "blend in" with the rest of the crowd that creates a special case.
If you are born poor as a black person, you are still twice as likely to remain poor.
As for your comment that being born white is some kind of disadvantage is just laughable. Look at the data, what does it tell you? The fact is, almost every statistic out there indicates the opposite.
Median net worth for black families is 1/10th that of median white family net worth in America.
You may think that your success in life is entirely dependent on your personal grit and whatever. But the reality is that wealth and success is heavily dependent upon generational wealth and social capital. Which means that those whose ancestors were enslaved and otherwise abused are by definition starting way, way back from the starting line.
You don't get to have a head-start and then halfway through the race declare that from this point forward, all rules will apply to everyone equally. You especially don't get to pretend that those that had to start way back from the start line don't have some little weights attached to their ankles (i.e. modern racial bias).
> this person’s contribution was not the reason for the naming but the fact that black people were supressed
As opposed to all those other buildings, all of which were uniformly and fairly named after people with unimpeachible accomplishments in a purely meritocratic system, you mean?
I mean, come on. People name junk after stupid things All. The. Time. And no one cares. Seriously, go to your local campus or government center or NASA facility or whatever and look up the names on the buildings and lecture halls and bathroom stalls. Tell me those people "really deserved" that recognition.
Until you name something after a black woman. Then all of a sudden the white men get all meritocratic on your ass.
> As opposed to all those other buildings, all of which were uniformly and fairly named after people with unimpeachible accomplishments in a purely meritocratic system, you mean?
As opposed to an ideal people strive for. Of course no one will ever be happy with every name. Every person has their own opinion. It doesn’t mean there is no place for public discourse around it.
> I mean, come on. People name junk after stupid things All. The. Time. And no one cares.
Evidently people care a lot about such stuff. Maybe you don’t like it, but many people like when the streets and buildings honor respectable people.
> Seriously, go to your local campus or government center or NASA facility or whatever and look up the names on the buildings and lecture halls and bathroom stalls. Tell me those people "really deserved" that recognition.
Do you have an example?
> Until you name something after a black woman. Then all of a sudden the white men get all meritocratic on your ass.
They don't, though. When was the last HN thread about a building named after someone undeserving? Or really any discussion about a routine honorific misapplied? Anything remotely similar?
Only now, in a thread about a building named after a black woman, do "people" start to "care a lot about such stuff".
> When was the last HN thread about a building named after someone undeserving? Or really any discussion about a routine honorific misapplied? Anything remotely similar?
Uhm? Some states even renamed Columbus Day. It is not simply "remotely similar", a national holiday is much more prominent than a building.
There is nothing meritorious about being black, or being a female, or being white, or being male. You cannot choose your race, or your biological sex. You didn't earn these traits, and you aren't a better or worse human being for having any of them.
The NASA HQ was named after somebody to celebrate traits they didn't earn or choose. There are plenty of engineers that were objectively better engineers (I'm sure there were or are many black female engineers who are better engineers than this individual). And there were many engineers that contributed more to the space program than this individual.
If their achievements were that incredible, we would've heard much more about them. Plenty of white engineers had successful careers, contributed to their program, performed well, but will forever go un-named, and unappreciated. And that's fine. Nobody is complaining about that, and neither am I. That's life. But to pluck somebody out of a huge number of engineers because of something they had no control over (the color of their skin) and then name a building after them because of it? Absurd.
Overcoming sexism and racism is something to be proud of and for others to celebrate. Nobody's celebrating this person for their identity in isolation but overcoming a situation where all the odds are very much stacked against a person of such an identity.
> If their achievements were that incredible, we would've heard much more about them. Plenty of white engineers had successful careers, contributed to their program, performed well, but will forever go un-named
This isn't remotely true. The majority of things are named after white men to the exclusion of everyone else.
> The majority of things are named after white men to the exclusion of everyone else.
That's because the majority of scientific achievements to date, have been by white men. I'm not celebrating that fact, I'm just pointing out the source of the statistic you've pointed out. The things weren't named because the person was a white male, they were named because of a tremendous achievement that happened to be made by a white male. When the majority of engineers are white men, that's when you get that trend. As we see more black men/women achieve great things, we will see more things named after them.
Unfortunately, the rate of scientific and natural discovery in my opinion is slowing down. There will never be a black Christopher Columbus because there are no continents left to discover. There won't be a black Thomas Edison, because we already have light globes. Going out of our way to inflate other achievements just for the sake of naming buildings after minorities is a ridiculous thing to do.
Then solve the exclusion problem. Don't pretend it has already been solved by naming things after black people. It's like taking a painkiller and thinking your broken arm is fixed. Fix the problem, not the symptom.
Mate, shut up with the nonsense. There are many scientific concepts that originated in Asian/MiddleEastern civilizations that simply happen to have a European name because the latter person popularized it in the West.
the reason "politics" are so derided on this website is because these guys can't stop themselves from impulsively showing their true colors (and exposing the very endemic racism at hand in the process!) at the drop of a hat
Maybe, but I think an equally large problem is the habit people have of (i) dichotomizing every issue and (ii) simply painting another person as racist/horrible or otherwise socially unfit. No one can have a real conversation where this is the norm.
Yes, this is a throwaway. Yes, I shouldn't do it. But frankly, it's the only way I would ever comment on something like this. Everyone involved in American culture war subjects is too toxic. Too many norms of debate about almost every topic are toxic. It'll be the end of your country if this continues.
Then those Asian and Middle Eastern countries are welcome to put up statues for those people. Nobody is stopping them.
Would you like to give an example to back up your claim though? There is no statue in the US celebrating somebody for discovering the number zero, or gunpowder, or paper, or anything else I can think of that was brought over to the West.
If you're saying we should never celebrate anybody that builds on the achievements of others, well then we shouldn't celebrate anything in science at all. All discovery and progress builds on the work of those that came before us.
What concepts are you talking about? Do you have examples? For example, as far as I know no one tried to make alcohol, algebra, algorithm distinctly European. In fact you can realize these words came from Middle East because all of them are prefixed with “al-“, Arabic for “the”.
I would argue that the level of success and contribution despite racism, which is a significant hurdle, makes it so that nothing is being inflated.
Also I get your point that at NASA and in the USA we have mostly white scientist until recently, but I take issue with your statement about the majority of scientific achievements.
Historically there are thousands upon thousands of Arab and Chinese scientific achievements, to name a few cultures that aren't white. I don't think that is what you meant though.
Why should the US put up statues of people that weren't not from the United States? Yes, there were plenty of scientific achievements in centuries gone by. But there is a big difference between not putting up statues of Chinese-Americans, and not putting up statues of people from ancient China. Those are two completely incomparable celebrations of success. There will be many people from thousands of years ago who made discoveries who we will never know about. That's not the point here.
Columbus didn't discover anything, or claim to, accurately at least. He went to his death thinking he'd found passage to India. He was also responsible for genocide.
It’s a symbolic gesture relax. While it irks you it might inspire a young black kid to become an astronomer or phisicist or astronaut. As a white there are plenty of inspiring people. Some of them have been power hungry and ruthless and nobody knows how many people they trampled on. Some of those are white symbols.
Why not let balcks have their own?
As a white person who has experienced imposter syndrome at times in the tech world, I think I would have had a harder time overcoming it if I looked around and never saw another white person. Obviously that is not the case. I suspect giving young black girls someone to look up to is more powerful than people realize. If naming a building helps with that, why not do it?
Also, if we are really going to suddenly be meritocratic above all else, we must immediately remove a lot of names from things. I don't want to get too far removed from engineering, but it's a great argument for getting rid of Confederate names.
Reminds me of what Neil deGrasse Tyson said about being a visible black authority figure of science and knowledge.
> In an undated interview at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Tyson talked about being black and one of the most visible and well-known scientists in the world. He told a story about being interviewed about a plasma burst from the sun on a local Fox affiliate in 1989. "I'd never before in my life seen an interview with a black person on television for expertise that had nothing to do with being black. And at that point, I realized that one of the last stereotypes that prevailed among people who carry stereotypes is that, sort of, black people are somehow dumb. I wondered, maybe ... that's a way to undermine this sort of, this stereotype that prevailed about who's smart and who's dumb. I said to myself, 'I just have to be visible, or others like me, in that situation.' That would have a greater force on society than anything else I could imagine."
I find it interesting when race is pointed out as a positive trait in some contexts but not others. E.g. a black engineer is a good inspiration for a black child because they are both black. Whereas if I showed my child a great white engineer because the engineer was white, I'd be criticised for being a racist. If race doesn't matter, why do we need more of x race as engineers? If race does matter, why isn't the current majority race allowed to have the same preferences/inspirations (consciously at least)?
Who would say you're racist for showing that white engineer?
Also...I'm not a minority, but I can imagine that if I looked around and there were none of my kind in a position of power, I'd start to think maybe I shouldn't be there.
You can show a white child a picture of a white professional all day long and personally I wouldn't call you a racist.
It's the same reason we have a black history month in the US but not a white history month, or the same reason we have gay pride month but not straight pride month.
It's because every month is a white history month, and every month is a straight pride month.
A white child in the US is very unlikely to get the impression that their race might make it hard or impossible for them to become an engineer, so there is no need or benefit to specifically pointing out to your child that some great engineer is white.
Not so for a black child. There is a very real possibility that their being black will make it harder for them to become an engineer. Being show other people who faced the same hardships and overcame them can help keep them from getting discouraged.
> Not so for a black child. There is a very real possibility that their being black will make it harder for them to become an engineer.
There's also the very clear benefit of affirmative action that makes it easier to become an engineer, preferential treatment at top schools etc.
While a white child, and even more so an Asian one, might look at laws and statistics and Harvard and realize that, indeed, it is provably harder for them to become an engineer.
> The NASA HQ was named after somebody to celebrate traits they didn't earn or choose
to celebrate them for their achievements made while fighting uphill and exponentially harder than their white counterparts in a society rigged against them in uncountable avenues
If you went purely by merit / contributions to the space program you'd probably have to name it after a literal Nazi who employed slave labor. If that's not acceptable, then you have to admit that pure merit is not the right criteria, and that there is a political aspect to it as well.
I think what those people mean when they say that is that it hasn't materially changed anything for most people, unlike what some reforms (or revolution) could do for people. They see it as a form of tokenism which they think historically hasn't helped much.
Personally, I see both sides. I think this is actual progress that will indirectly have positive material benefits while also recognizing we can obviously do better than this.
The negative comments are because people aren’t aware of their privilege and they need to check it. I personally don’t see the issue, this is recognizing someone for their contribution. It’s a very easy gesture that doesn’t harm anyone. Yet people want to rant about this isn’t fair or this won’t solve racism. Life isn’t fair and this woman had to deal with hardships that were imposed on her because of things she had zero control over. Yet she still accomplished a lot. Recognizing the unsung heroes is a great thing and there should be more of that, especially if it’s a woman or a person of color.
Strongly disagree. If the overall contribution was close, I'd say give her name to the building but apparently it isn't. Also naming the building after her solves nothing, in fact its obvious why they did it.
Yes, I know as a black woman she had so many things against her, but so did a lot of people back then.
This is Hollywoodification. They’re not naming it after Mary Jackson because she’s the first black NASA engineer, but because Hollywood made a movie about her.
If some historian digs up a previous African American engineer, will they change the name? No.
A while ago the Federal Marshall Service wanted to name their headquarters after Wyatt Earp. There was outrage, and they backed off.
This is good because it encourages African-Americans, other minority people, and women to pursue engineering. There are so many people who would be great engineers but aren't. They are missing out on good careers. And society is missing out on good engineers.
Renaming buildings is an easy way to help improve things.
Asians do very well in America and they didn't need buildings named after them. Why do you think black people need buildings renamed before they start learning calculus, physics, etc?
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 182 ms ] threadShe was the junior of the three starring characters in the movie Hidden Figures.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Figures
The movie's a good story, but if you want actual history, read the book.
The movie deliberately side steps history in order to tell a story. For example the accomplishments of the three primary characters occurred during unrelated timelines. The three primary characters likely knew each other in passing but in addition to the different timelines they worked in unrelated departments on unrelated projects. Also Katherine Johnson took 3 days to confirm John Glenn’s landing coordinates within the week of launch. The movie reduced that to an hour effort holding up launch for dramatic effect. John Glenn really did ask for Johnson to personally verify the numbers though.
There are three supporting characters that are real life figures: Al Harrison played by Kevin Costner, Jim Johnson played by Mahershala Ali, and Olke Krupa who played a fictionalized version of a real engineer mostly accurately depicted as Mary Jackson’s real life supervisor. The rest of the supporting cast were largely stereotype figures.
Considering the historical reality I did not take the white characters as white saviors at all.
This is the "they're scared of us" trope.
A well deserved announcement.
NASA has a much smaller budget today so I wouldn't be surprised if you've got to display much more merit in college or your career to get selected as an engineer.
No one involved in naming this thought that was the case. They are giving overdue recognition.
I can't imagine why people would be negative about this besides feeling threatened.
(he is a particularly bad exemplar of the point you are trying to make)
If they were going to pick people who greatly contributed to the success of the Apollo program, they should have picked Houbolt.
The reason I love the sciences is that in general, people are more meritocratic in those circles compared to others. I've found especially in scientific academia that people are far more meritocratic compared to other disciplines. This also applies at science/engineering companies. No, not at all levels (the more business-y you get, the less of a meritocracy it becomes). But usually team-leads, senior engineers, etc. rise because of merit. Always exceptions, but in general. Much more than as an accounting firm where you rise because you know somebody who knows somebody.
Unfortunately, as time goes on, I've seen academic circles in sci&eng, and especially tech companies (and silicone valley in general) become much more interested in stay relevant, keeping up with social trends and movements, and appearing progressive. You see this with all the FAANG companies calmoring to be the first to speak out against some injustice or another, or be the first to take a stand on Their Platform(TM).
And with this, the meritocracy has slowly declined. You don't rise in a company because you're a skilled engineer - you can rise because you're a token minority. Or because you're the most outspoken on a social injustice and can see a way for your company to solve it (sorry, profit from it). You can be rewarded because you were the first (insert random minority here) to solve a problem or do something that plenty of other people had already done. Rather than celebrating scientific advancement, we're now celebrating the type of people making that advancement. What next, the first black woman to clone a GitHub repo? Let's name the GitHub HQ after that.
I don't think they need to be meeting racial quotas for prizes, but my guess is that there is a lot of work to be done in the system that promotes and nominates candidates and those systems in place that decide who and what gets published.
You made a very big assumption about me, based purely on my preference for working environment and social environment. There is nothing jealous about wanting to see people rewarded based on merit.
If you mean that gifted people should have their livelihood subsidised by the state, then sure, I'm open to exploring merit based scholarships, and society investing more in the sciences and so on. But nobody gets a prize in science without actually putting in the work and achieving something. Though, admittedly we are seeing that less and less. Society in general is becoming less meritorious (participation awards, etc).
Anyway, I won't waste my time further debating what's obvious gaslighting.
It is indeed gaslighting to talk about “safety nets” when there is a student loan crisis in the country.
Which means they are much more likely to be able to get support from home or even a home to move back to if things get tough.
It's a lot easier to take the economic risk of a post-grad or post-doc program when you know there is a family with means to fall back on.
Excessive student loans are not a serious issue relative to what many in poverty face. If you don't make enough money to pay your student loans, then you can defer them indefinitely. Or just not pay them. It might keep you from getting rich. But it's not going to keep you from eating.
Calling someone’s argument “obvious gaslighting” is just an appeal to incredulity.
It is a gross generalization and on an individual basis there is no way to check or know if that ______ person had equal opportunities or they didn’t. The problem with generalized appropriations but localized relief is that unfairness is vividly unbearable to those who are impacted. Imagine if race ______ gets 20 more points in an exam than the rest because they just happen to be a part of a minority. That would be infuriating to a lot of people who took that exam. It’s no fault of ours - this is a natural reaction of all humans. Now, if you’re not taking that exam, that might sound very benevolent. Life is like an exam in some ways. If everyone can take the exam, that would be great. Some can’t even take it, and that where the focus should be - eliminate poverty, inspire people to work hard, and enable people to go to college.
Imagine for a moment - you’re laid off, your family depends solely on you to survive. You’ve interviewed and you think you got the job only to realize that a minority person took it instead only because of the color of their skin. Would you be ok with that(assuming it’s true that there was no meritocracy involved)? This whole thing about improving the world goes into the toilet when your child is crying and you’re looking at your house being foreclosed.
If you’re well off, everything is rosy. You need to also consider other viewpoints.
Then you are told that you didn't get the job because now (as of the day the civil rights act passed or the day Obama was elected) we no longer have racial bias in our hiring practices and we are now officially a meritocracy.
So no, I don't see a problem with a system that might slightly favor a minority because I doubt that on the whole they are actually getting any sort of advantage anyway.
97% feels oppressive when you are used to 100%.
If a white person grew up poor and in a single parent home, they can put on a nice suit and go to a job interview and blend in. And I'm not necessarily just talking about today. But definitely in the very recent past. Which affects the parents of children today and their ability to provide a good education among many other things to make their children competitive.
But talking more about today, it was in the early 2000s I believe where a study was done sending out thousands of identical resumes. Some with white sounding names and others with black sounding names. The white names got 50% more callbacks than the black names. That is an astounding difference and that alone shows that we have a serious problem. I suspect if we did that today, the results would be better, but still not "color blind".
Nobody serious denies that individuals of the latter race were less likely compared to individuals of the former race to win a given prize amount in the lottery of birth, due to historical and ongoing slavery, Jim Crow and systemic racism, war on drugs/black families, etc. Most people believe that the historical and cultural context justifies giving members of the latter race help to "catch up".
The problem lies in the perceived taking away, factual or not: requiring higher test scores for individuals of your race for university admission, hiring less-qualified individuals of another race rather than well-qualified individuals of your race for the good corporate PR, etc. It's obvious that racial handicaps ensure a distributional qualification disparity among the races for accepted candidates. They also make it easy for candidates who don't make the cut, even if they would not have made the cut had they been members of the preferred race, to blame the preferred race for their failure. Whenever an individual of the preferred race makes a mistake or gets a bad grade or review, more people will assume that that person is simply unqualified, even if members of the non-preferred race actually make the same mistake/get the same grade/review at higher rates! As you note, this especially harms qualified members of the preferred race. The racial handicap is fertilizer for racists and sets up a pervasive subconscious racial bias that simply won't go away until the handicap is removed.
I think true progress will only be made once we avoid taking anything away or imposing any racial handicaps and gather the collective willpower to positively support disadvantaged people of all races. We need to ameliorate the stumbling blocks people face to fully developing the skills, personal character, and emotional and familial stability necessary to access opportunity. But this is an enormous task requiring huge amounts of coordination across government and civil society, and doesn't get clicks^H^H^H^H^H^H votes as well as "This One Quick Fix Will Solve Racism in 20 Years! Doctors Hate It!"
I have found that quite a few people seriously DO deny those facts. Look no further than several of the other responses to my comment.
As for taking things away, I agree that handicapping someone due to their race is not good. But unfortunately, society is a bit too complex to completely avoid it. The reality of many racial equality programs is not that less qualified candidates are awarded over more qualified candidates but that in cases where two candidates are effectively equal, preference is given to minority candidates. Because let's be honest, a few exam points here and there or extra-curriculars do not really make much difference.
Why not focus on improving communities? I don't want to replace meritocracy with favored treatment one iota, doesn't matter if you were disadvantaged or not.
It is the height of hypocrisy as:
- What about native indians?
- What about asian minorities?
- What about people with disabilities?
- What about people with low IQ scores?
- What about people with low grades in schools?
- What about people that got killed by Genghis Khan?
- What about people that died in the crusades?
At this point, this whole thing lands on a shaky foundation of hypocrisy and favored treatment which is kind of ironic that that's exactly the problem you're trying to solve.
Born with a brown skin? You've got things lined up pretty good for you just because you were born brown. Born with a white skin? You've got things lined up pretty much against you just because you were born white (for the record, I am not white). This is reversing what used to happen. I don't think this is the solution, the solution is to go fix the problems in the first place - higher funding to impoverished schools, lifting up the people from poverty and letting these communities flourish. Colored or not. Instead, Democrats focus on reparations in place for meritocracy.
I want a society that stops talking about race on both sides - the oppressive and the oppressed. Color of the skin should be taught as a matter of historical context, not some kind of a revenge/reparations. Stop wasting energy on trying to undo history, instead focus on the future.
Who said anything about cash reparations or Democrats? Yes, programs should be better funded to make up for the past evils of our society. But what about the people here and now that are disadvantaged due to past evils and the lack of these programs in the past?
It's the pairing of past injustices with the inability to just "blend in" with the rest of the crowd that creates a special case.
If you are born poor as a black person, you are still twice as likely to remain poor.
As for your comment that being born white is some kind of disadvantage is just laughable. Look at the data, what does it tell you? The fact is, almost every statistic out there indicates the opposite.
Median net worth for black families is 1/10th that of median white family net worth in America.
You may think that your success in life is entirely dependent on your personal grit and whatever. But the reality is that wealth and success is heavily dependent upon generational wealth and social capital. Which means that those whose ancestors were enslaved and otherwise abused are by definition starting way, way back from the starting line.
You don't get to have a head-start and then halfway through the race declare that from this point forward, all rules will apply to everyone equally. You especially don't get to pretend that those that had to start way back from the start line don't have some little weights attached to their ankles (i.e. modern racial bias).
As opposed to all those other buildings, all of which were uniformly and fairly named after people with unimpeachible accomplishments in a purely meritocratic system, you mean?
I mean, come on. People name junk after stupid things All. The. Time. And no one cares. Seriously, go to your local campus or government center or NASA facility or whatever and look up the names on the buildings and lecture halls and bathroom stalls. Tell me those people "really deserved" that recognition.
Until you name something after a black woman. Then all of a sudden the white men get all meritocratic on your ass.
As opposed to an ideal people strive for. Of course no one will ever be happy with every name. Every person has their own opinion. It doesn’t mean there is no place for public discourse around it.
> I mean, come on. People name junk after stupid things All. The. Time. And no one cares.
Evidently people care a lot about such stuff. Maybe you don’t like it, but many people like when the streets and buildings honor respectable people.
> Seriously, go to your local campus or government center or NASA facility or whatever and look up the names on the buildings and lecture halls and bathroom stalls. Tell me those people "really deserved" that recognition.
Do you have an example?
> Until you name something after a black woman. Then all of a sudden the white men get all meritocratic on your ass.
This looks like projection and envy.
They don't, though. When was the last HN thread about a building named after someone undeserving? Or really any discussion about a routine honorific misapplied? Anything remotely similar?
Only now, in a thread about a building named after a black woman, do "people" start to "care a lot about such stuff".
Uhm? Some states even renamed Columbus Day. It is not simply "remotely similar", a national holiday is much more prominent than a building.
The NASA HQ was named after somebody to celebrate traits they didn't earn or choose. There are plenty of engineers that were objectively better engineers (I'm sure there were or are many black female engineers who are better engineers than this individual). And there were many engineers that contributed more to the space program than this individual.
If their achievements were that incredible, we would've heard much more about them. Plenty of white engineers had successful careers, contributed to their program, performed well, but will forever go un-named, and unappreciated. And that's fine. Nobody is complaining about that, and neither am I. That's life. But to pluck somebody out of a huge number of engineers because of something they had no control over (the color of their skin) and then name a building after them because of it? Absurd.
> If their achievements were that incredible, we would've heard much more about them. Plenty of white engineers had successful careers, contributed to their program, performed well, but will forever go un-named
This isn't remotely true. The majority of things are named after white men to the exclusion of everyone else.
That's because the majority of scientific achievements to date, have been by white men. I'm not celebrating that fact, I'm just pointing out the source of the statistic you've pointed out. The things weren't named because the person was a white male, they were named because of a tremendous achievement that happened to be made by a white male. When the majority of engineers are white men, that's when you get that trend. As we see more black men/women achieve great things, we will see more things named after them.
Unfortunately, the rate of scientific and natural discovery in my opinion is slowing down. There will never be a black Christopher Columbus because there are no continents left to discover. There won't be a black Thomas Edison, because we already have light globes. Going out of our way to inflate other achievements just for the sake of naming buildings after minorities is a ridiculous thing to do.
That's because everyone else was excluded. To overcome this pervasive and hostile environment takes exceptional ability.
Stop trying to prevent black people from receiving praise.
Yes, this is a throwaway. Yes, I shouldn't do it. But frankly, it's the only way I would ever comment on something like this. Everyone involved in American culture war subjects is too toxic. Too many norms of debate about almost every topic are toxic. It'll be the end of your country if this continues.
Would you like to give an example to back up your claim though? There is no statue in the US celebrating somebody for discovering the number zero, or gunpowder, or paper, or anything else I can think of that was brought over to the West.
If you're saying we should never celebrate anybody that builds on the achievements of others, well then we shouldn't celebrate anything in science at all. All discovery and progress builds on the work of those that came before us.
Also I get your point that at NASA and in the USA we have mostly white scientist until recently, but I take issue with your statement about the majority of scientific achievements.
Historically there are thousands upon thousands of Arab and Chinese scientific achievements, to name a few cultures that aren't white. I don't think that is what you meant though.
Also, if we are really going to suddenly be meritocratic above all else, we must immediately remove a lot of names from things. I don't want to get too far removed from engineering, but it's a great argument for getting rid of Confederate names.
> In an undated interview at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Tyson talked about being black and one of the most visible and well-known scientists in the world. He told a story about being interviewed about a plasma burst from the sun on a local Fox affiliate in 1989. "I'd never before in my life seen an interview with a black person on television for expertise that had nothing to do with being black. And at that point, I realized that one of the last stereotypes that prevailed among people who carry stereotypes is that, sort of, black people are somehow dumb. I wondered, maybe ... that's a way to undermine this sort of, this stereotype that prevailed about who's smart and who's dumb. I said to myself, 'I just have to be visible, or others like me, in that situation.' That would have a greater force on society than anything else I could imagine."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson#Race_and_s...
Also...I'm not a minority, but I can imagine that if I looked around and there were none of my kind in a position of power, I'd start to think maybe I shouldn't be there.
You can show a white child a picture of a white professional all day long and personally I wouldn't call you a racist.
It's because every month is a white history month, and every month is a straight pride month.
A white child in the US is very unlikely to get the impression that their race might make it hard or impossible for them to become an engineer, so there is no need or benefit to specifically pointing out to your child that some great engineer is white.
Not so for a black child. There is a very real possibility that their being black will make it harder for them to become an engineer. Being show other people who faced the same hardships and overcame them can help keep them from getting discouraged.
There's also the very clear benefit of affirmative action that makes it easier to become an engineer, preferential treatment at top schools etc.
While a white child, and even more so an Asian one, might look at laws and statistics and Harvard and realize that, indeed, it is provably harder for them to become an engineer.
No? Minorities are marginalized all the time.
> You learned about Helen Keller instead of W.E.B. DuBois
> You learned about the Watts and L.A. Riots, but not Tulsa or Wilmington.
> You learned that George Washington’s dentures were made from wood, rather than the teeth from slaves.
> You learned about black ghettos, but not about Black Wall Street.
More: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213622838
It's truly insidious how systematic this is in our lives.
to celebrate them for their achievements made while fighting uphill and exponentially harder than their white counterparts in a society rigged against them in uncountable avenues
Personally, I see both sides. I think this is actual progress that will indirectly have positive material benefits while also recognizing we can obviously do better than this.
She wanted humans in space, he wanted them in heaven (early in his career).
Yes, I know as a black woman she had so many things against her, but so did a lot of people back then.
It was funny at the beginning but it's not any longer.
If some historian digs up a previous African American engineer, will they change the name? No.
A while ago the Federal Marshall Service wanted to name their headquarters after Wyatt Earp. There was outrage, and they backed off.
Something tells me that won’t happen here.
Downvote away.
Renaming buildings is an easy way to help improve things.