How history forgot the black women behind Nasa’s space race
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
to imply that these women should not have been forgotten because of their race and gender seems silly to me. we don't generally remember people because of their race or their gender, we remember people primarily for unique/influential/pivotal actions.
that said the article was still good, and not really all that about the title.
We emphasise the actions of white men as being more important those of other groups. We write out of history the acts and perspectives and contributions that other groups have made and somehow manage to convince ourselves that we are not biased.
You describe a meritocracy that we aspire to and yet is almost completely detached from reality.
Why else would minority groups be over represented in prisons and below the poverty line, generally lower educated, generally compensated at a lower level than white male counterparts of the same skill and education level.
Coincidentally because of an inherent superiority of white males? I don't fucking think so.
I find that interesting. And it's also interesting that certain minorities are overrepresented in prisons outside the United States as well.
> Generally lower educated.
Well the cat is out of the bag that the poor performing minority schools are actually getting more funding per-pupil than majority white schools. So what's the problem, is it because of white males in the U.S. somehow?
> Compensated at a lower level
Do you know how easy it is for an average-skilled black man or woman to get hired in their trade? Do you know that if you're say an electrician's union, you will get placed on vastly more projects than white workers just because of skin color and project demographic scoring? Do you know that once even a private company grows to a certain point they begin getting hounded by the gov't and private groups over their demographics? The structural racism is not only a lie it goes in the opposite direction. Anyone who works in gov't, education or private trades knows this full well.
You're also holding up the trades as the potential high point that black folk can aspire to, which (no disrespect to the trades as they are extremely important) seems more than a little racist itself. Electrician is a great job, but isn't it curious that you didn't mention top level management executive, lawyer, knowledge worker, doctor, engineer...
That is not what science and history tell us. It may be what folks want to believe, especially folks who like to think they live in a meritocracy. Both history and science show that men get more credit than women, for example. Professors get higher ratings from students, job applicants get more callbacks and higher offers, researchers get more papers accepted by journals, etc. All have been the subject of recent studies showing that, a given resume, paper, or performance will get better outcomes if it's attached to a male name rather than female.
Motherhood statement. Let me guess: male, white, middle class and educated? Women of colour experience a different world to you.
I lived through the late stage of Apollo and the space race and followed it closely as a kid and never read or saw images of scientists, technicians other than the stereo-typical short white sleeve engineer with glasses. This is a book and film I'll be looking out for.
Now that's bigoted. What should he do, "check his privileges" ?
Nobody forgot - a low level of interest is not akin to history forgetting. I guess that wouldn't make for such a dramatic headline though!"
It's true. Some media article is always telling us how we're bad and we forgot. Except we didn't. And our textbooks at least since the 80s have had this kind of content in them.