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

https://www.axios.com/nasa-black-female-engineer-headquarters-7e859612-0832-4448-af5c-6a7ad3b64f19.html

by chewdatgenie • 6 years ago

170 54 6 years ago

axios.com

austincheney2• 6 years ago

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• 6 years ago

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.

a-wu• 6 years ago

A great movie indeed however it uses the white savior trope gratuitously. The scene where Kevin Costner’s character lets Octavia Spencer’s character into the mission control room never happened in real life.

TedDoesntTalk• 6 years ago

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

drewbug2• 6 years ago

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

Rebelgecko• 6 years ago

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

drewbug2• 6 years ago

Did you edit this after posting?

sheqels• 6 years ago

We haven't been to the moon since 1969.

HenryKissinger2• 6 years ago

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

HenryKissinger2• 6 years ago

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• 6 years ago

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.

jjeaff8• 6 years ago

I think you are seriously lacking in historical knowledge and context for the general regard and treatment of black professionals in the 60s.

cyberlurker• 6 years ago

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.

nickff2• 6 years ago

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.

justin662• 6 years ago

If only Neil Armstrong had accomplished something significant outside Hollywood, perhaps then he would be worthy of having a building at Edwards named after him, is what you're saying?

(he is a particularly bad exemplar of the point you are trying to make)

grugagag• 6 years ago

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?

Thorentis3• 6 years ago

I want to remind them we dont live in a meritocratic society

The reason I love the sciences is that in general, people are more meritocratic in those circles compared to others. I've found especially in scientific academia that people are far more meritocratic compared to other disciplines. This also applies at science/engineering companies. No, not at all levels (the more business-y you get, the less of a meritocracy it becomes). But usually team-leads, senior engineers, etc. rise because of merit. Always exceptions, but in general. Much more than as an accounting firm where you rise because you know somebody who knows somebody.

Unfortunately, as time goes on, I've seen academic circles in sci&eng, and especially tech companies (and silicone valley in general) become much more interested in stay relevant, keeping up with social trends and movements, and appearing progressive. You see this with all the FAANG companies calmoring to be the first to speak out against some injustice or another, or be the first to take a stand on Their Platform(TM).

And with this, the meritocracy has slowly declined. You don't rise in a company because you're a skilled engineer - you can rise because you're a token minority. Or because you're the most outspoken on a social injustice and can see a way for your company to solve it (sorry, profit from it). You can be rewarded because you were the first (insert random minority here) to solve a problem or do something that plenty of other people had already done. Rather than celebrating scientific advancement, we're now celebrating the type of people making that advancement. What next, the first black woman to clone a GitHub repo? Let's name the GitHub HQ after that.

glosses• 6 years ago

Doesn't this go both ways? Is it really more meritocratic to choose someone who made a greater contribution if they were given significantly better opportunities throughout their life to achieve it? Can you even judge merit if not everyone is given an equal start?

guerrilla• 6 years ago

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• 6 years ago

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• 6 years ago

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

lixtra• 6 years ago

Well, intent matters.

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

onetimemanytime• 6 years ago

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.

mleonhard• 6 years ago

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• 6 years ago

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?

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

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