"Why wasn't there anyone who looked like me?" Explaining the Moon Landing to a mixed race child.

[jcmaine72]

This morning I was watching a tribute to the Apollo 11 moon landing on TV with my 7-year-old niece, whom I was babysitting, and who is half white and half African-American. She casually asked why there wasn't anyone who looked like her either among the astronauts or in the Mission Control Center. I'll admit I was a little taken aback by her question at first. Not because I was at a genuine loss for words, but because of how perceptive and intelligent she is for her age. I sure as heck wasn't as smart as she was when I was her age, that's for sure.

At any rate, I attempted to explain to her that the U.S. was a very different country 50 years ago in terms of the opportunities that it afforded its citizens, especially women and PoC. No doubt, I told her, there were plenty of women and people of different races in the U.S. back then who could have done what Neil Armstrong had done, if only they had been given the training and opportunity to do so. She seemed satisfied with this answer, and I left it at that.

Thank goodness the tribute we saw on TV didn't mention Werner Von Braun or his Nazi past. I honestly don't know how I would've explained that one to her since she already astutely associates Nazis with our orange imbecile of a president. I'd hate for her to think that Trump, by association, would somehow be capable of designing a rocket that could take people to the moon.

[Ilsa]

1. Time to show her the movie, Hidden Figures.

She'll see both the bigotry towards and the contributions made by WOC.

[CatWoman]

3. that's a great idea

[bdamomma]

5. oh god, Ilsa

I said the same thing. Love DU'ers we can be on same wavelength!!

[Doodley]

13. Loved that movie!

[jcmaine72]

15. Great stuff! I've never seen that movie before. It sounds like just the sort of thing I'd like to

watch with her.

Thank you!

[Ilsa]

18. And look for a biography of Katherine Johnson,

one of the mathematicians at NASA.

[hlthe2b]

2. No one that looked like more than 50% of us either (women)

[Baclava]

21. Meet the women behind NASA's historic Apollo 11 launch

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/apollo-11-launch-meet-women-behind-historic-nasa-mission-to-the-moon-2019-07-16/

As a programmer at MIT, Margaret Hamilton's code got humans to the moon





NASA Pioneer Poppy Northcutt Reflects on Her Role in the Apollo Program





https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/nasa-pioneer-poppy-northcutt-role-apollo-program/

[bdamomma]

4. 7 years old

smart girl,

Hidden Figures the movie would be a good example.

[yardwork]

6. There's never been a woman on the moon, either.

[maxsolomon]

7. There was an African-American Astronaut.

Ed Dwight. He didn't make it onto the mission.

Big story on it in the NYT just today: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/us/ed-dwight-was-set-to-be-the-first-black-astronaut-heres-why-that-never-happened.html

[Blue_Tires]

9. Thanks, I was about to dig that up...

[Hermit-The-Prog]

8. Apollo -- made possible by women, immigrants, diversity

Actually, everything accomplished by NASA depended on the talents and skills of a diverse army of people that dumb donald and his fellow misogynistic white supremicists routinely deny.

You might want to expand your viewing to include some of the excellent specials PBS has been running this month.


https://www.waaytv.com/content/moon-landing-stories/African-Americans-broke-barriers-in-space-race-as-Huntsville-worked-to-send-man-to-the-moon-511647382.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/underappreciated-power-apollo-computer/594121/

https://wehackthemoon.com/bios/ramon-alonso

[maxsolomon]

11. Don't discount the power of white short-sleeved shirts

With black ties!

Also cigarettes.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

14. chain smokers

They found an old pack inside one of the consoles being restored.

[cwydro]

10. HIdden Figures. Great movie. Watch it with her.

Women of color had a great deal to do with the space program.

The movie is good, but the book is even better.

[jcmaine72]

16. I'm definitely going to watch it with her. Thank you!

[Blue_true]

19. You can use the movie and the documentary she just watched

as powerful teaching tools that she can rely on later, especially as she progresses through school.

Looks like you have a pretty large intellect that you can help shape, a lot of people don't have that opportunity.

[Doodley]

12. I loved the opening post and read it to the in-laws, who are white Trumpers. One of them said

yes, it is true that black folk were not given the same opportunities, but not many white folk had the opportunity to go to the moon either. I said I understood that, but that wasn't really the point.

[LAS14]

17. One reason, even after we get into a better world...

... will be that at the time black people were 10-20% of the population. Not sure about other POC. If the focus is on women, then the answer is that we've had a revolution since then.

[Blue_true]

20. I think that Black people have never been more than 13% of the national population.

Black percentages were and are higher in the South because of the institution of slavery. Hispanics are now a larger percentage of the population than Blacks are. One thing that hasn't been given much attention is that for the last couple of decades, the Black birthrate has not been much greater than the White birthrate, while the Black death rate has been considerably higher, so the White to Black ratio slowly dropped over around 6 decades from 6.5 to 5.3 nationally, in my Florida county it is around 6.6 now, so my county is considerably whiter than the nation as a whole.