There is an ongoing effort by some members of the American Enterprise Institute to erase or marginalize people like Katherine Johnson from history. It isn’t clear to me how this type of campaign is aligned with "free markets"
I skimmed the PDF linked there, it consists mainly of two accounts of the _book_ Hidden Figures by two engineers who worked with Katherine Johnson and they both praise her, her work ethic, her skill as a mathematician and do little to marginalize her other than acknowledge that there were many black engineers at NASA back in the day, all to this day unknown, unhonored, sans medals and some more talentented and pivotal than Katherine.
What they do, however, is rip hard into the book.
One at least was consulted prior to publication with early drafts to offer comments and corrections.
Their particular complaint is not that the story should not be told, rather that a good number of events described in the book are simply false in varying ways from details being wrong to absolutely didn't happen.
Their accounts are a critique of the accuracy of a book being held as an accurate account of the historic record.
There's a sense of wanting a better telling with less fabrication, not one of wanting to "erase or marginalize people like Katherine Johnson from history" particularly given the nods to other black engineers and the suggestion that they too had stories.
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[ 6656 ms ] story [ 41.5 ms ] threadhttps://hiddenfigurescritique.com
What they do, however, is rip hard into the book.
One at least was consulted prior to publication with early drafts to offer comments and corrections.
Their particular complaint is not that the story should not be told, rather that a good number of events described in the book are simply false in varying ways from details being wrong to absolutely didn't happen.
Their accounts are a critique of the accuracy of a book being held as an accurate account of the historic record.
There's a sense of wanting a better telling with less fabrication, not one of wanting to "erase or marginalize people like Katherine Johnson from history" particularly given the nods to other black engineers and the suggestion that they too had stories.