The 'Human Computer' Behind the Moon Landing Was a Black Woman (thedailybeast.com) 269
Reader bricko writes: The 'Human Computer' Behind the Moon Landing Was a black woman (video). She calculated the trajectory of man's first trip to the moon by hand, and was such an accurate mathematician that John Glenn asked her to double-check NASA's computers. To top it off, she did it all as a black woman in the 1950s and 60s, when women at NASA were not even invited to meetings. And you've probably never heard of her. Meet Katherine Johnson, the African American woman who earned the nickname 'the human computer' at NASA during its space race golden age.
Link? (Score:4, Interesting)
A link to an interesting and relevant story about Katherine Johnson...
Or were we supposed to just Google or Wiki her?
Re:Link? (Score:4, Informative)
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The link is next to the title.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/videos/2016/04/07/the-human-computer-behind-the-moon-landing-was-a-black-woman.html [thedailybeast.com]
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The Senior Statustition on the X-15 with North American Aviation was also a woman, her name was Helen Stratton/Perault and was my grandmother on my mother's side.
Re:Link? (Score:5, Funny)
Use mathematics to debunk supersticians.
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Use mathematics to debunk supersticians.
That's a great service! I hate it when my supersticians get all full of bunk...
and I'm not touching that stuff...
Computers (Score:5, Insightful)
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I wish I had mod points. That is clearly the most interesting aspect of this. I wonder what the effects will be for other jobs currently being automated like waiter, host(ess), etc
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I wish I had mod points. That is clearly the most interesting aspect of this. I wonder what the effects will be for other jobs currently being automated like waiter, host(ess), etc
"Waiter" got its secondary meaning long before "computer" with "dumbwaiter".
Another transmogrified title include "calculator". It's even come full circle with the expression "human calculator" for someone good at arithmetic in their head. All calculators used to be human.
Re:Computers (Score:4, Funny)
Well, if history is any indication, any job ending in "er" will be replaced by machines.
Computer, driver, teacher, waiter, progra-GO BACK TO WORK, SLAVES!
Re:Computers (Score:4, Funny)
Also the proctologists, because who really wants to deal with assholes all day?
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Well, if history is any indication, any job ending in "er" will be replaced by machines.
how about- lawyer.
Bring on the machines...
(quietly changing my diploma to "Enginear" and hoping the robots don't notice...)
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I was going to reply to the GP that it will truly be the end of humanity when machines start programming themselves.
Then you had to make it even worse...
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Hooker too?
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https://www.realdoll.com/ [realdoll.com] (NSFW*, * work/wife)
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When you say it's interesting, is that because you'd never heard it before? And if the answer is in the affirmative, are you Amish?
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Seems to undersell her work somewhat. A computer simply computes the results of someone else's equations, but according to Wikipedia she was doing much more.
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It's interesting how quickly what was a job title for someone, became so quickly a term used solely the device. Where in the 1940's a "computer" was someone who did math, then by the 1960's, someone who did the same job as her peers 20 years prior was given that as a nickname.
I want to see proof that this was actually a nickname at that time. In the 1950s and 1960s it was still quite common to refer to humans who did intensive calculations as "computers." The idea that this particular person was referred to as "the human computer" as a laudatory nickname in an era when her job title was likely still "computer" seems really bizarre.
It sounds more likely to me that TFA was written by someone who didn't understand that people back then were still referred to as "computers," so
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Human adding machines in a sense. Though they did multiplication and division too and could look up in tables. I think some people look back from the present day with a mindset that computers are amazing, mathematics is very difficult and hard without an electronic calculator, and so think that someone doing this work must be completely amazing. Yet it was very commonplace. Now being very good at that job gets one promotions or opportunities in better jobs, but ultimately there's some more important pe
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The same thing has happened with the word 'camera' far more quickly. 10 y
I haven't heard of her (Score:2, Insightful)
I be fair, I couldn't name anyone else on the Apollo engineering team, either.
It always seems kinda racist to me ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no doubt they have good intentions writing this, though. But still.
Re:It always seems kinda racist to me ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well yeah, it sounds stupid today. But there was a time when that sentence was "common knowledge".
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She's not black, she's even whiter than Michael Jackson: picture [visionaryproject.org].
Maybe she is of African descent, I don't know. But if they want to call her black she should have dark skin...
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She's very much like Michael Jackson. No, not *that*, and it was never proved anyway.
Scroll down for the younger photo.
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I sort of see what he's getting at. Look at her features.
I have darker skin, especially in summer, than some Africans. I'm an Anglo-Taff-Paddy, and that's exactly what I look like.
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if she was black enough to have been hanged a century before that, then she's black.
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http://www.visionaryproject.or... [visionaryproject.org]
Though her father had quit school after the sixth grade, he considered education of paramount importance for Katherine and her older siblings Charles, Margaret and Horace. Since the local schools only offered classes to African Americans through the eighth grade, he enrolled his children in a school that was 125 miles away from their home. Katherineâ(TM)s high school was part of the West Virginia Collegiate Institute (formerly the West Virginia Colored Institute). In 19
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Were her calculations any "blacker" than others? Or more "feminine"? No? Then why should anyone care? You might as well talk about someone's shoe size or the length of their nose.
Re:It always seems kinda racist to me ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... to write these things as being remarkable. She's black and a woman. Impossibru, she must be as dumb as a door nail!
You should probably read a history book or two before making such a stupid comment.
Of course it was remarkable in 1940!
Women we're not given jobs doing anything more than trivial tasks, and black people typically were NOT given jobs by white people at all because actually paying them anything was more than their labor was seen as worth.
You do realize it wasn't even illegal to discriminate against blacks or women until 1964 right?
It was perfectly common back then to not hire either women or black people and to outright tell them it was because they were a women or black, and they just had to suck up the injustice of it without any recourse.
The fact she was both brings down the wrath of two groups of discrimination that ran very strong, and continued to do so for decades beyond that point in time, yet did such amazing mathematical work, should give you a slight idea of the effort and work she had to put into her life and career to even get to that point.
The fact she had a job what so ever was pretty exceptional, let alone a job typically only given to college graduates, which blacks weren't welcome to attend for the most part, and was again perfectly legal to not allow them to, and as a woman the fact her skills knowledge and ambitions were more than "I want to sew or bring the man of the office coffee" was fairly unheard of.
Unheard of... as evidenced by the fact you and most people haven't heard of her.
Also the very fact stories like this are so rare is not an indication of how "behind the times" the author is, but a testament to exactly how rare such a situation was at the time.
Just because you haven't experienced or witnessed discrimination since the year of your birth to now, doesn't mean it was anything close to how it was in the past.
Again I can't stress enough, you need to read some history if for no other reason than to learn your limits and not make such authoritative sounding yet factually incorrect stupid statements.
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See, you're doing it wrong. And you're missing entirely why. If you (and many others) keep pointing to history instead of looking forward and keep pointing to racial differences while being well intentioned you're actually keeping them alive. Much more so than actual racists, who are intellectually easier to ignore.
If we, as people, have the discipline to raise 1 or 2 generations of people who aren't told how truely remarkable it is when
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google 'morgan freeman black history'. He says it best; stop talking about it.
And finally, racism is the persistent claim that if we just stop talking about it, it will go away.
So Morgan Freeman is racist? Or maybe he just has different opinions on how to combat it?
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Nice story bro. Too bad it isn't at all true.
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It makes more sense in the historical context. Remember that in the 50s there were still laws segregating black people. Access to education was difficult for most black people. Feminism and women's lib was only starting to have an effect. Well done to her for overcoming those hurdles, and props to NASA for being progressive.
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This doesn't matter academically of course, she did what she did because of who she was, not w
You're missing the context (Score:2)
Most of commentators agree with you (Score:2)
And so do I. Now, for the sake of the thought experimentation, let's imagine we have a second scenario. Same color, however exactly opposite academic and professional achievements. No achievements or accomplishments, to be precise.
All of the sudden, discussing about racism and underprivileged becomes acceptable. To me, that is the real racism.
As if women of color are not capable of making decisions. They are more than capable and there are a lot of inspiring examples, let's start from Madam C.J.Walker ( htt [wikipedia.org]
Madlib for future similar posts and stories (Score:3, Insightful)
That way we can get all the outrage and praise in all at once.
She wasn't the only one (Score:5, Informative)
There was a pool of women (and men) at NASA who were ALL referred to as "computers". NASA didn't start using electronic computers for flight dynamics calculations until 1962, and continued to rely on the pool to crosscheck the electronic calculations until 1984.
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I see what you did there.
on-board Flight Software (Score:3, Interesting)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
To me, all of them are great scientists, regardless of race.
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I've never heard of her. I got off on a bit of a googling tangent, and found the company she started, Hamilton Technologies. They claim to have this thing called Universal Systems Language that incorporates all the lessons learned from developing the Apollo software. Maybe it does, but it's a proprietary language. By no means am I a free software zealot; but this looks like a classic case of holding on too tightly. I could not even find a "hello world" example in that language. Does anybody use it? I
Ah, it's a CASE tool (Score:3)
OK, googled around a bit more. There's no "hello world" because it's a CASE tool--design abstractly in the GUI, dump out in the language of your choice.
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I guess that means YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT WOMEN, HUH?
Uhhhh (Score:2)
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Let's name all the other people who worked with her.
What do you mean, we can't? There's your answer.
It's sort of a first-man-on-the-moon scenario.
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I didn't think so.
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All I can think is if she's going to be remembered because of her work at NASA /or/ that she just because she was a black woman. In other words, would this video, this article, her popularity, etc etc, exist if she were not a black woman? Hmm.
Personally I would have been just as interested in the story if it were titled and about "The human computer that made the moon landing possible". Sure the black woman thing makes it more interesting to a broader audience (maybe), but as nerd (for which this site is supposed to cater to), the fact that it was a human that was used to double check a computer's computations, is interesting enough.
Patently racist and sexist (Score:2)
All that headline leave out is the exclamation mark at the end. Why is it that we have to express such astonishment over the fact that a *black woman" (OMG!) calculated trajectories.
Or is this less about this competent mathemetician's imopressive accomplishments, or it is to, yet again, wring our little hands over the injustice of modern society and how terrible we should all feel about how bad we are?
The latter, I think
Let's be sincere (Score:2)
If she had been a man, we wouldn't have heard of him a lot either.
So affirmative action isn't necessary? (Score:3)
If she could get so good at math back then, why anyone should be able to do it now, right? We don't need to worry about the so-called education gap or take a bunch of extra steps to help black people overcome so-called obstacles because obviously if she was able to do it then, it should be much easier for even less skilled people to do it now.
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One person overcoming the odds doesn't mean that everyone can do it. That's why they are called the odds.
Also, if we want to have a meritocracy then everyone has to have a fair and equal chance. Different people start life in different positions (parent's wealth, location, and yeah, race) so unless some effort is made to even things out it's not selection on merit, it's selection on merit + personal circumstances.
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EVERYONE has the same 'odds' and obstacles to overcome.
+1 Funny.
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For the most part, I agree. And what is more, I think that the only real way to overcome racism or sexism is for someone to sit down and succeed despite disadvantage and then, more importantly, pass on their ethic and their culture of getting shit done to their children and others in their community.
Every person on Earth, Kings, Queens or otherwise, likely has poor or disadvantaged people in their past at some point. There were days where you could capture white people on the Mediterranean and sell them i
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There is nothing inherently superior, or inferior, or disadvantaged about being white or black. What *can* make you disadvantaged is your culture and how you look at life.
I think this is so true. My sense is that most black Americans are caught up in a psychology of failure and victimization which does far more damage than any systemic discrimination does these days.
Unfortunately, it's a mass culture/sociological phenomenon that entraps individuals in ways that are almost impossible to overcome without aba
One small step for black women (Score:2, Funny)
I see the RACs are out in Full force today. (Score:3, Insightful)
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I've worked in tech for a few years now, and while I've never heard anyone advocating discrimination against women, blacks or hispanics, I have frequently heard people advocating discrimination against men, whites and asians. So I have to agree with you that racism and sexism are endemic within tech industries.
Fortunately, it seems that a majority still believe that people should be treated the same, regardless of their race or sex.
Everyone is special (Score:2)
>"the African American woman who earned the nickname 'the human computer' at NASA during its space race golden age."
There are probably a number black women as well as European American women, and all kinds of people people of all races, creeds, religions, sexual orientations, etc behind all the workings of NASA that we have never heard of before.
It means she’s awesomer than you. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it IS amazing that a person who is BLACK and a WOMAN could get into such an important position back in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Today we recognize it as foolish and stupid to prejudge someone’s abilit to DO MATH (for instance) on the basis of gender or skin color. But back then?
What this tells us is that she’s fucking awesome, more awesome than you and me. She’s so awesome that people at NASA in an era that only valued white men simply were unable to deny the level of her skill. To break through the prejudice required that she have skill way beyond what a white male would have needed to get into the same job.
So yeah. Kudos to this woman for her intelligence, skill, and persistence in an era that would have otherwise begrudged her a job as a toilet cleaner.
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skin color
I'm sorry, what color are we talking about exactly? This is what she looks like: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Katherine-johnson.jpg [wikimedia.org].
Also your rambling about men at NASA doesn't make sense: most people with job title "computer" at NASA were women, it was a female-dominated field.
lem.bas (Score:2)
the conspiracy goes farther than I thought (Score:2)
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Except when someone non-white does something, in which case we need to have the race or skin colour shoved in our face.
Not true. A black female student won a prestigious prize in New York City. Fox News ran the story without showing her picture. Everyone else showed her picture. Go figure.
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Isn't it racism? As in, Fox News didn't want people to know that a black female student won a prestigious prize in New York City?
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Isn't it racism?
Fox News doesn't want to disturb their audience with the idea that black people are smart. Or even capable of being the President of the United States.
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Said some bored high school student on the internet. So jeezuz christ! It muse be trues!
Now this was written by a bored high school student.
However, the incident was true. Unfortunately, I can't provide a link. A Google search returns too many recent results for Fox News and racism.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
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These days it is patronizing but back then I imagine it was fairly remarkable but, maybe not. Looking into this, many of the "computers" back then were women. What I do find slightly offensive is the notion that she was "black". The woman appears more caucasian than african but our society treats anyone with even a smattering of african blood as "black". This strikes me as deeply racist.
As to whether she's black I'd ask if she self-identifies as black.
As for the focus on female humans computers and her race you can be certain in a Hollywood movie based on the moon landing the mathematicians calculating the orbits would either be absent from the script or a bunch of white guys. It's exactly what people mean when they talk about "whitewashing" in Hollywood, these stories are important to point out that even in the past there were prominent women and minorities.
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As to whether she's black I'd ask if she self-identifies as black.
I think the more significant question is whether the bus drivers in Virginia identified her as black.
http://www.visionaryproject.or... [visionaryproject.org]
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Although at the time, computing was not necessarily a prestigious career choice. Ie, the job of doing computation by hand. It was often repetitive and rote. Those people with prestige figured out the algorithms or problems to be solved and then used the answers for their own work. The viewpoint at the time was probably like comparing an accountant to a mathematician. This is not to diminish what this person did of course.
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When I grew up in Brooklyn in the 1950s, I had a fair number of black teachers.
My favorite biology teacher was a young black woman who had worked as a lab technician. She taught me how to breed fruit flies and grow bacteria. That kind of favor, you don't forget.
I've also known a fair number of blacks who were successful in science and engineering.
I had a housemate in college who was studying chemical engineering. Never got to know him. He was always studying.
I remember a black guy who was working as a compu
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These days it is patronizing but back then I imagine it was fairly remarkable but, maybe not. Looking into this, many of the "computers" back then were women. What I do find slightly offensive is the notion that she was "black". The woman appears more caucasian than african but our society treats anyone with even a smattering of african blood as "black". This strikes me as deeply racist.
The only vestiges of racism, eg, Black vs White vs Asian vs native American is with the USA. The rest of the north/south American continent sees some wonderful humans and even family. I look at friends as people who are kind, generous, helpful, and with good humour. My friends and I see no colour.
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In the 50's "Computer" was a job title.
Yes, large organisations had "computer pools" and "typist pools", both were almost exclusively filled with women. Even during the 70's when I went to HS, boys were not offered typing lessons because "boys don't grow up to be typists". Computers (of the human variety) were in very high demand during WW2 to compile artillery tables, the same job that first electronic computers were put to work on.
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when I went to HS, boys were not offered typing lessons because "boys don't grow up to be typists".
Funny story TC, I asked and asked because I spent so much time on a keyboard. I got my way, they thought I was crazy going to a class room to learn to type. I was surrounded by lots of very hot young ladies, mum was proud, my mates were jealous, I got better typing on computers and yes I went there - it was fucking awesome.
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We're not allowed to talk about race or skin colour because that's racism.
Says who?
It's just a historic fact that white people tend to have not had to overcome racism. Some have of course, and there are stories about them, from historical figures travelling the world to modern day rappers. But it's just a fact of history that in our societies, in the history that matters most to us, non-whites were treated pretty badly. When this woman was born signs saying "whites only" were perfectly legal and not uncommon.
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The problem with this kind of reactionary response is that it completely misses context. We already know that their is an unconscious bias towards white males in western society, it's been demonstrated time and again, and it even applies to the views of people who aren't white males themselves (black Americans do worse in tests when they've been asked to state their ethnicity in advance for example). We don't know exactly why this is,
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Yes, but if you call it "Melanin-Opulence-Impairment Subjects Television", then you'll just make everyone uncomfortable.
Long way to go to make that joke, I know.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
We have B.E.T. (Black Entertainment Television) on cable tv, but if someone made W.E.T. you can bet it'll be called racist.
We already do. It's called Spike [spike.com]. :p
While you're at it, how about 'Lifetime: Television for Women'? For that matter, in a world ostensibly full of equality, and race/gender/sexual orientation blindness, do we need special programming for {insert special interest group here}? Because we live in a world full of racism, bigotry, sexism, and inequality-in-general, that's why. If we actually lived in a world without those horrible qualities, we wouldn't have the vast majority of the problems of the world in general that we're seeing right now, either.
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WET sounds like more a porno channel to be honest.
that said, "white entertainment tv" already exists: it's known as nearly every other channel and show .
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First television broadcast in the US started in 1928 [wikipedia.org].
African Americans were quite common on TV from the beginning, and by 1939 the Ethel Waters Show [aaregistry.org] featured Ethel Waters, a black entertainer, headlining and starring in her own TV variety show. So 11 years from the first broadcast to the first regular show starring blacks. That's a bit shorter than 50 years...
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Common, my ass. It was a minstrel show. Black people to entertain white people. You find many people in dramatic series? Comedy shows besides Amos & Andy (played by two white guys on radio, by the way). How 'bout a Playhouse 90?
If it comforts you to think of yourself as not racist, I don't care. But just be aware that your counter-examples just draw a big underscore under your bigotry.
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"Amos and Andy"
kek
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Maybe you should read the article:
She had to play a fucking servant and Waters herself was ashamed of the role, but needed the work.
Your example exemplifies why there is
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pay up, twat.
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Is it really necessary to bring the gender component into this?
She is a brilliant person who was instrumental in our space program. Isn't that enough?
There, fixed that for you.
Seriously, as human beings, the people we look up to and emulate, the people who inspire us, are people with whom we identify in some way. The details are what allow us to identify with them.
The particular person in this story is more readily inspirational to women, and to blacks, because they can identify with those facets of her id
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It is supposed to be inspirational.
Of course, it reads like a morality play about the evils of segregation, so instead of inspiration, we keep having to be reminded of how some smart woman who clearly did a lot of important work, got constantly screwed over because she was black and a woman but somehow managed to do work anyway.
If this is the inspiration that women and blacks of today are reading, it's no wonder they're mad and disenchanted. Would I have gotten into IT if everyone told me that I would have
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Would you have gone into whatever field you were in if someone kept telling you that they had to be super brave just to deal with trying to get a job like you're looking at?
Sometimes I think these "role-model" stories are written more like cautionary stories that play up the drama of being segregated. Perhaps you don't need the black face of someone who had to struggle through their field to actually do it. Maybe if you told a story of someone who simply enjoyed their work, white or black, you would have
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As much as I agree, you'd be surprised just how clear her background would have been to the people in the South at that time. There would be a lot of cues, and people at that time would err on the side of considering you "colored" if they even suspected it.
Of course, it wouldn't have hurt that she probably conformed with the rules and roles about being African so she didn't do something her own, possibly darker, family members could not have gotten away with.
If there was a law passed that made Latin lookin
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“I just happened to be working with guys,” she said, “and when they had briefings I asked permission to go. They said, ‘The girls don’t usually go.’ I said, ‘Is there a law?’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then my boss said, ‘Let her go.’”
Did you catch the line: ‘The girls don’t usually go.’
Fucking moron.
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I disagree. If there was an article about how a black woman *now* did something, it would be sort of how you described it, because duh, who cares, it's not news that someone of a gender and skin color did something noteworthy, there's nothing stopping them.
But that is because we've come a huge way since the 50s, when there were absolutely *loads* of things stopping them, which absolutely does make this story interesting, newsworthy, and impressive, because back in those days, women and black people were ove