vball10set;1833174 wrote:My wife saw Hidden Figures and loved it...however, she had one question--why did it take so long for us (aka America) to discover these smart-as-hell black women who were the literally called 'computers'? You would've thought by now someone would've recognized their contributions to the space program and made it public--I mean, it's not like we're stuck in the 60's...is it?
Good question - as a reasonably well-read guy who read "The Right Stuff" and followed the space program from the 1960's, and who was also unaware of these women until seeing the movie this weekend (we really enjoyed it)
- institutional racism, by which I mean there are a plethora of blacks in various fields who weren't known about in other facets in our history - this might be the biggest, though.
- the collective faceless machine that is NASA consisted of so many people behind the scenes from 1955 to 1975 that the sheer numbers of talented people who were cogs in the machine don't lend themselves well to publicizing individual or small-group accomplishments, even if they were racial pioneers. That whole NASA ethos seems to be "No matter where we come from, we know we're the cream of the crop, and we know the historical importance of what we're doing - and just knowing that is a better reward than publicity."
-that Hollywood producers thought the "real" story was so dull that they were forced to invent meaner and more blatantly racist villains than actually existed.
Kinda disappointed to learn that in reality, Dorothy Johnson's white colleagues (when she was detailed as "the computer" in the orbit computation group) pretty much accepted her and respected her work, and that things weren't AS bad as portrayed. The restroom she actually used was a heck of a lot closer, and Jim Parson's character was a fabrication.
Still, a very apt title for the movie - "hidden" no more.
