[See Also: Hyped Figures: John Glenn And the PC Myth of Katherine Johnson —Unsung Black Women Were NOT What Got US To The Moon; Why Not A Movie About Jack Crenshaw—The White Man Who Actually Did What HIDDEN FIGURES Credits To Black Women; America Should Be Ashamed: Why Isn’t HIDDEN FIGURES About “Nazi Scientist” Arthur Rudolph?].
The article doubting the truths of Hidden Figures characters or rather, the poor attempt at click bait- is dripping in White tears. Why take the time to write about the non existent reverse racism? You surely could have summarized the article in a 140 character or less tweet! "Dr. Jack Crenshaw helped too!" and "Katherine Johnson doesn't even look Black! She is probably White!" And let's not forget "Few Black Women getting us to the moon is laughable!"
I had hoped your particular brand of racism was dying out with the last of the "it was a different time" racists, but your article made me understand that as a Black Female Doctoral student, there will still be those who doubt my credibility due to the amount of melanin in my skin.
I am hopeful you will educate yourself on your many, obvious privileges and use it to inform others with a similar rhetoric on why articles like these cause harm that goes further than my career. While I will concede that Hollywood's attempts to sell tickets fictionalizes portions of the story, I would choose to take a fictional portrayal of real life people over complete erasure any day.
Of course, all this begs the obvious question how “fictional” Hidden Figures really is.
From Harlem to Watts, the first moon landing in July of last year was viewed cynically as one small step for "The Man," and probably a giant leap in the wrong direction for mankind. Large segments of the rest of the population, except perhaps at the time of the first landing, were merely bored.
In long run, these black leaders got what they wanted. America gave up exploring the heavens to spend untold trillions pretending race didn’t exist.
Now, we are expected to fall on our knees to praise the obviously inflated contributions of three black women canonized in a film which has already won a Screen Actors Guild award and will no doubt win an Academy Award.
But even in 1969, NASA and the federal government would have been proud to show off any black contributions to the moon landing. By highlighting black contributions to the Apollo program, NASA could have kept blacks from singing songs like Gil Scott-Heron's “Whitey on the Moon” (which bemoaned how a rat could bite the black singer’s sister while white people were on the moon).
Which is why Hidden Figures matters and must be lavished with awards and praise. It creates a new narrative, completely devoid of truth, about black participation in man's greatest achievement even in the face of discrimination. And it’s a narrative that a certain audience—it should be noted women made up 64 percent of the opening weekend audience, with minorities representing 57 percent of those seeing the film—want to hear [Hidden Figures cast celebrates as film hits No. 1, by Joey Nolfi, Entertainment Weekly, January 9, 2017].
And she can only be brought up now because the real truth about black opposition to the space program has been hidden in plain sight.