NASA names headquarters after first Black female engineer Mary W. Jackson

[HenryKissinger]

Becoming a NASA engineer in those days must have been extraordinarily challenging. That Mary Jackson, a black woman, succeeded in doing so in a society, and a professional culture (engineering) dominated by white men (nothing against white men, am a white man myself, just pointing out an objective fact, please put your pitchforks away) speaks to her talent and the grit it took to achieve what she achieved.

A well deserved announcement.

[electronWizard]

Probably not to be honest, she deserves the merit she is getting for the work she did. However, the Apollo program in the 60s at it's peak was 4% of the US government budget compared to 0.5% today. The federal government was had a fire hose full of greenbacks aimed at NASA so I'd assume they were hiring huge numbers of engineers directly, and also indirectly through all the aerospace/defense manufacturers who were working on the space program while also simultaneously getting huge contracts for designing ballistic missiles.

NASA has a much smaller budget today so I wouldn't be surprised if you've got to display much more merit in college or your career to get selected as an engineer.

[austincheney]

Edit: the article spells this out.

She was the junior of the three starring characters in the movie Hidden Figures.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Figures

[warent]

I'm not much of a movie watcher but this one is an outstanding one! Highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't already seen it.

[cyberlurker]

I've seen negative comments of people claiming this is fruitless and that it pretends to solve racism forever (here and elsewhere).

No one involved in naming this thought that was the case. They are giving overdue recognition.

I can't imagine why people would be negative about this besides feeling threatened.

[grugagag]

I dont know if feeling threatened but aware this person’s contribution was not the reason for the naming but the fact that black people were supressed. It’s a generous move but not highly meritocratic. People might have a problem or two with that. I want to remind them we dont live in a meritocratic society anyway and the powerful snatch the merit away like a giant magnet. It will naturally bruise some egos and pump up some other ones and appear to make a bit of justice. The question is, will black americans be treated as second class citizens in 10, 20, 50 years from now?

[nickff]

NASA seems to have started a pattern of naming things after people featured in movies, rather than those who contributed deeply to its achievements. Re-naming the Dryden Center to the Armstrong Center appears to have been part of an unfortunate trend.

[guerrilla]

I think what those people mean when they say that is that it hasn't materially changed anything for most people, unlike what some reforms (or revolution) could do for people. They see it as a form of tokenism which they think historically hasn't helped much.

Personally, I see both sides. I think this is actual progress that will indirectly have positive material benefits while also recognizing we can obviously do better than this.

[spaceisballer]

The negative comments are because people aren’t aware of their privilege and they need to check it. I personally don’t see the issue, this is recognizing someone for their contribution. It’s a very easy gesture that doesn’t harm anyone. Yet people want to rant about this isn’t fair or this won’t solve racism. Life isn’t fair and this woman had to deal with hardships that were imposed on her because of things she had zero control over. Yet she still accomplished a lot. Recognizing the unsung heroes is a great thing and there should be more of that, especially if it’s a woman or a person of color.

[RedComet]

They should have named it after their key man, Wernher von Braun.

[lixtra]

Well, intent matters.

She wanted humans in space, he wanted them in heaven (early in his career).

[mleonhard]

This is good because it encourages African-Americans, other minority people, and women to pursue engineering. There are so many people who would be great engineers but aren't. They are missing out on good careers. And society is missing out on good engineers.

Renaming buildings is an easy way to help improve things.

[throwaway829]

Asians do very well in America and they didn't need buildings named after them. Why do you think black people need buildings renamed before they start learning calculus, physics, etc?

[murat131]

It will stop when all members of the society are equally treated by the government and all of its institutions.

[TedDoesntTalk]

This woman should be on the front of a limited edition $100 US bill.

[Rebelgecko]

No offense to Salmon Chase, but the bill denomination your face shows up on is not proportional (even logarithmically) to one's importance or worth as a human being

[drewbug]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_denominations_of_United_...

[drewbug]

Did you edit this after posting?

[sheqels]

We haven't been to the moon since 1969.

[HenryKissinger]

There have been six Moon landings. The last happened in 1972.

[onetimemanytime]

Strongly disagree. If the overall contribution was close, I'd say give her name to the building but apparently it isn't. Also naming the building after her solves nothing, in fact its obvious why they did it.

Yes, I know as a black woman she had so many things against her, but so did a lot of people back then.