
How history forgot the black women behind Nasa’s space race - oldbuzzard
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/sep/05/forgot-black-women-nasa-female-scientists-hidden-figures
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randyrand
Most people that helped nasa with the space race have been forgotten.

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.

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throwaway_java
No.

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.

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throwaway_java
I don't understand the down votes happening here. This is clearly an ingrained
facet of Western politics and society.

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.

~~~
michaelbuddy
>Why else would minority groups be over represented in prisons

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.

~~~
throwaway_java
you seem to be arguing that the necessity for controls to counteract systemic
racism are evidence that the racism does not exist. That's a total
contradiction.

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...

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dankohn1
Watch the trailer the article is promoting. It's inspiring, and about time to
add their stories to those of the Right Stuff or Apollo 13.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK8xHq6dfAo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK8xHq6dfAo)

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michaelbuddy
best comment from the page: "If history forgot.....why are we reading about
it? Why can I find countless accounts of this online? Why are their books
talking about? TV interviews? Print articles? Etc etc.

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.

