Hidden Figures

[Lorizael]

Saw this earlier today. It's the semi-true story of three black, female mathematicians who worked at NASA when the US was first getting its space program together (and segregation was still in full swing). Good movie, although it very faithfully hits all the usual beats for an inspirational underdog story, and I wish the science/math had been a little beefier. But I had two main thoughts while watching the movie.

Thought one: There are several scenes in the movie where white men do something to combat the institutionalized (and sometimes personal) discrimination of the era, and the music swells and it's all heroic. I don't fault the movie for playing up this stuff, but I feel like that has to be infuriating in real life. That when the people who benefit from oppression stop oppressing for a moment, they're seen as heroic and selfless and all that jazz. Yet when the oppressed are fighting against oppression, most of the time they are seen as troublemakers. Progress doesn't come until white people stop being racists, and then we praise ourselves for that. This reminds me of something Chris Rock has said:

Here’s the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.

So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast over there, would you say their relationship’s improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, “Oh, he stopped punching her in the face.” It’s not up to her. Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship has nothing to do with Tina Turner. Nothing. It just doesn’t. The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.

And yet, it's hard to think of how it might work any other way, because it is ultimately up to the people in charge to bring about change, and since we're still mostly in charge, we're going to frame it the way we want to. MLK is seen as a hero of the Civil Rights movement now, but that wasn't always the case, especially not when he was alive. He was assassinated, after all.

Thought two: I've been thinking about this a lot recently, throughout my astronomy education and especially since Vera Rubin's death, but the movie does a good job of showing how exhausting it is to be an oppressed minority doing a job society doesn't really want you to do. We see a little bit of the main-ish character's childhood, when it was her dream to be a mathematician. And that was her dream: to be a mathematician. But when she grows up, she's instead forced to be a black, female mathematician. The characters in the film all have to fight to get access, education, and recognition in a way that white men don't. And even after they have gotten the recognition they deserve, they then feel it's their duty to make sure future generations of minorities don't have to work quite so hard.

I see this even today. Essentially every woman astronomer I know or have heard of plays double duty: doing astronomy, and fighting for women in astronomy. That wasn't their dream growing up. They just wanted to be astronomers. But they feel as if they can't be just that, as if they have a duty also to work for women in their field. And that just has to be so exhausting and unfair. I'm glad my disadvantage--mental illness--is something I can basically hide from people if I want to. And even though I can do that, I still sometimes feel the urge, the responsibility, to talk about it and write about it in a way that I hope can change minds. I don't, in part because I wouldn't want to get drawn into my life being about that, but I do feel the urge.

Final thought: I saw this movie at 10:30 am on a Friday, so there were only about 25 people in the theater, but I was the only white guy there. (There was one white woman.) Hmm.

[Proteus_MST]

Well, I guess it will take a long time till race or gender vanish out of the heads of the people (at least with regards to judging them/putting them into drawers).

Actually look at #BlackLivesMatter
Even this is racist in a way ... as they only point at their own "race" i.e. blacks
Why not: #AllLivesMatterRegardlessOfRace


As for Genderism we even today have well famous actresses fight for gender equality with regards to pay, as even they (among them well known actresses like Jennifer Lawrence or Angelina Jolie) gotpaid much less than their male Co-Stars in the past, despite doing the same work and having the same importance of their role in the movies.

[SlowwHand]

I was thinking about going to see this movie.
Unfortunately, this thread doesn't help, since it's TLTR.

[Lorizael]

Actually look at #BlackLivesMatter
Even this is racist in a way ... as they only point at their own "race" i.e. blacks
Why not: #AllLivesMatterRegardlessOfRace

Everyone says that all lives matter, and yet somehow based on what we all do, black lives seem to end up mattering less. So maybe let's remember that black lives matter, at least as a start. And then maybe, just maybe, that will follow through in our actions, too.

[Elok]

Well, re: heroic music for whitey, I could say that Hollywood has a history of being just as racist as the rest of America in terms of casting and such, only being more sanctimonious about lecturing other people about it (assuming they don't play the same heroic music when one of the black heroes says "hey, schmuck, you're building the rocket wrong," for example). But also, it depends how you read the situation. Yes, the movie is supposed to be about the black people, but it's silly to consider the white people all part of one lump "oppressor" group they all belong to by default, and from which a few dissent. If what you're fighting is an entrenched system of rules and expectations within a society, then all people within a society are subject to those expectations, which were instituted long before, and not necessarily their conscious perpetrators. A white person siding with blacks under such a situation is certain to be viewed as a troublemaker too, and unlike the black folk he has nothing to personally gain from it, only a reputation to lose. It seems rather crass to say, "well, all they're doing is following a moral imperative they were never taught, but which I retroactively recognize as to be expected of them (by me), so they're not heroes, whereas the black folk resisting a system that's personally ****ing them over are moral giants."

[Proteus_MST]

Everyone says that all lives matter, and yet somehow based on what we all do, black lives seem to end up mattering less. So maybe let's remember that black lives matter, at least as a start. And then maybe, just maybe, that will follow through in our actions, too.

Of course. Just shows how far away we are from a society that is blind to race (and gender)

[giblets]

Can you make a shorter version of your OP, with no words longer than five letters, for Slowwhand?

[SlowwHand]

[Lorizael]

Well, re: heroic music for whitey, I could say that Hollywood has a history of being just as racist as the rest of America in terms of casting and such, only being more sanctimonious about lecturing other people about it (assuming they don't play the same heroic music when one of the black heroes says "hey, schmuck, you're building the rocket wrong," for example). But also, it depends how you read the situation. Yes, the movie is supposed to be about the black people, but it's silly to consider the white people all part of one lump "oppressor" group they all belong to by default, and from which a few dissent. If what you're fighting is an entrenched system of rules and expectations within a society, then all people within a society are subject to those expectations, which were instituted long before, and not necessarily their conscious perpetrators. A white person siding with blacks under such a situation is certain to be viewed as a troublemaker too, and unlike the black folk he has nothing to personally gain from it, only a reputation to lose. It seems rather crass to say, "well, all they're doing is following a moral imperative they were never taught, but which I retroactively recognize as to be expected of them (by me), so they're not heroes, whereas the black folk resisting a system that's personally ****ing them over are moral giants."

Well, you talk about there being a system that is, in a lot of cases, not consciously enacted, but ends up being perpetuated anyway. I get that. But the thing is, if that's the real problem, then I think those heroic moments of breaking out of the system (while obviously necessary for the drama of a movie) aren't really what end up deconstructing the system. Instead, I think that comes much more slowly, through individual decisions about how we raise our children, the lessons we teach, who we choose to associate with, etc. Much of that is not really heroic per se. But it's the kind of stuff we should be praising--not because it's a white man taking it upon himself to free his black brothers and sisters, but because it's what we'd like cultural evolution to really be about: a long, nuanced conversation between differing peoples with growing respect and open-mindedness. It shouldn't be about us in power being so gracious as to give up a little power for those without.

[Elok]

That would make really terrible cinema, I think.

[Lorizael]

Agreed. But like, here's one thing. One of the main characters in the movie meets a guy--a black guy--who is initially disparaging of the main character's intellectual gifts, not because she's black, but because she's a woman. He eventually realizes that demeaning this woman is a bad way to get into her pants and apologizes, and they live happily ever after. But like, the development of this romance is not significantly more complicated than what I just typed out. It's a small part of a larger movie, but I legitimately think you could have a much bigger story just about that. It might take a whole movie for such a reversal to be convincing, because in reality we are not so quick to reevaluate our prejudices.

[Aeson]

Well, you talk about there being a system that is, in a lot of cases, not consciously enacted, but ends up being perpetuated anyway. I get that. But the thing is, if that's the real problem, then I think those heroic moments of breaking out of the system (while obviously necessary for the drama of a movie) aren't really what end up deconstructing the system. Instead, I think that comes much more slowly, through individual decisions about how we raise our children, the lessons we teach, who we choose to associate with, etc. Much of that is not really heroic per se. But it's the kind of stuff we should be praising--not because it's a white man taking it upon himself to free his black brothers and sisters, but because it's what we'd like cultural evolution to really be about: a long, nuanced conversation between differing peoples with growing respect and open-mindedness. It shouldn't be about us in power being so gracious as to give up a little power for those without.

That suggests that we should treat those as "heroic moments" (or more generally promoted as positive) so as to help to change culture to be rewarding of those actions? This is a causal system after all, people behaving in their perceived best interests, and changing the perception as to what is right and wrong needs a carrot. (We can't rely on the stick, as those with the biggest stick tend to be those who are the problem ... and past reliance on a stick is itself part of the problem. It's probably not a good idea to make it a stick fight.)