Author: obrien.879

Text Review Assignment: Hidden Figures

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For this Text Review, I chose a film called Hidden Figures, about an extraordinary set of women who achieved goals and pursued passions that at the time would have been deemed impossible for women of their race. The film is about 3 black women, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, who all work at NASA around the same time as the space race was going on where NASA was attempting to send John Glenn into orbit. At the time, the civil rights act was still not enacted, meaning the attitude of most of their colleagues were still very biased against them and they had challenges blocking their goals that today would be seen as violations of human rights.

These are true stories of women who overcame the greatest of obstacles surrounding things that they had no control over, like their race and gender. The best relationship from this course that I can relate to this film is the idea of “power” that was held by all of the white men, and some women, who worked around these women. For instance, the character Katherine Johnson had the job of calculating trajectories for the ship used in sending John Glenn into space, however her job was made so difficult because not only was she not allowed to work in the same space as the other calculists, but something so small as using the bathroom was a challenge as the only “colored” bathroom was located so far away from her workspace that she would have to essentially disappear for 30 minutes or more just to relieve herself, making it look as though she was neglecting her work. She possessed no power to change the challenges that made her job difficult, making it tough to show how devout she was to her work, because she was historically the best mathematician that NASA had on staff at the time. Another character, Mary Jackson, wanted to study to become an aerospace engineer, however, was not allowed to attend college courses to do so solely because of the color of her skin. She had to fight for her right to attend these classes in local courts, essentially fighting for the “power” that any person should inalienably possess.

This film poses questions relating to how we as a society perpetuate injustices that are so obviously unfair based upon the events of the film that actually took place, and how we can use the power we have as individuals to prop up those in society who might not possess as much power as us.

The pictures below show the actresses in the film versus their real life counterparts:

 

Diary of Systemic Injustices Showcase: Job Discrepancy

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Systemic injustices are hard issues to fix as they ingrained in the system we as Americans have to participate in everyday life to succeed. One injustice that I believe is overlooked is the idea that African-Americans are much less likely to obtain a job at a company, even with proper credentials like credible education, over those who are white. Studies have shown that African-Americans seeking a job at certain companies are upwards of fifty-percent less likely to obtain a job over white candidates with the same credentials, all because they possess “Black sounding” names. Furthermore, the African-American male employment rate according to brookings.edu is the lowest of any race and gender group, while also having the lowest labor force participation rates among groups of men.

These statistics are taken directly from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and also fail to mention that the Bureau does not account for many African-American males with low employment, which if accounted for would reduce the African-American male employment rate even further. It is possible to attribute this phenomenon to the opportunity taken away due to management choosing employees based upon things other than merit, like race.

For starters, logically jobs are supposed to be chosen based upon merit alone, and race should not be an essential decision making tool used to narrow that decision. It would not make sense that people are chosen for a job when they are less qualified than other candidates, however, if this decision is tilted in a direction between two candidates of equal merit simply based upon race, it becomes an issue that should be monitored more closely and corrected. This just places extra roadblocks upon people seeking future betterment through hard work, education, and goal-seeking, only to be pushed back based upon something they have no control over.

The National Bureau of Economic Research has been conducting studies on this phenomenon since the early 2000s and has found many ways to prove it’s unfortunate legitimacy. The page begins with a quote by the Bureau stating “Job applicants with white names needed to send about 10 resumes to get one callback; those with African-American names needed to send around 15 resumes to get one callback.” The outcome of their research yielded a statistically significant figure in which, referring to the previous quote, means this was no coincidence in their research. They also concluded having a white sounding name yielded as many callbacks as having an additional 8 years of work experience to those of their African-American competitors for the jobs listed.

In order to correct this phenomena, job applications could be made to be completely blind, with contact information included. This may lead to some issues directly speaking with certain job candidates, yet if names are not included, and candidates are selected before interviewing and meeting the company they employment from, individuals will have a more fair chance of getting certain opportunities and this disparity between African-Americans and whites in the competitive job market will slowly but surely close.

Sources:

https://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/employers-replies-racial-names

https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-are-employment-rates-so-low-among-black-men/

Week 5 Context Presentation: Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif”

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Toni Morrison’s Recitatif  is a fantastic deep dive into social and racial prejudice with an emphasis on nature versus nurture. The story begins with two young girls, Twyla and Roberta, who are admitted to an orphanage despite both not actually being by definition actual orphans. Both have a mother who is still around but are unable to care for their daughters in their own way. Twyla’s mother is described as too busy because she “danced all night” while Roberta’s mother was described as being too ill. Now being in the orphanage, these two girls had to share a room together and that did not bode well at the beginning because Twyla learned that Roberta was a different race from her which led her to exclaim she was sick to her stomach from such information. This leads me to talk about the most important aspect of this text, neither Twyla’s nor Roberta’s race is ever specified or even hinted at during the entire reading.

I believe Toni Morrison’s goal when writing Recitatif was to hopefully tap into the readers subconscious stereotypes, only to withhold any information confirming or denying such “accusations” so that one can reflect on these stereotypes and hopefully make any corrections necessary so that we can see everyone as equals, rather than seeing someone as only part of an exclusive group. One can clearly see this later in the story when Twyla proceeds to describe all that her mother, Mary, told her about this “other” race. Mary told Twyla that people of Roberta’s race never seemed to wash their hair and “smelled funny”. Now of course the reader will make their assumptions of what race Mary is referring to, however, there is no clear indication meaning Morrison’s goal of dragging out this subconscious prejudice is working.

Later in the short story, the process of school integration, a clash that was harshly criticized and supported by people of all backgrounds, comes up when Twyla and Roberta are much older and have children attending school in the same district, and even then Morrison still managed to conceal the racial identities of both characters despite talking about the quaint life Twyla was leading versus Roberta’s more lavish lifestyle. This in turn highlights the inconsistent idea of racial identity that hopefully the reader would have and even should have picked up on by this moment. Race is a social construct that was developed in a less equal society and has been perpetuated by ideas like “single stories” that Adichie referred to in the previous weeks of this course. One cannot assume and idea about somebody based upon the little information they heard about the collective group people like to clump others together in. Just because Twyla’s mother referred to Roberta’s “people” as smelly and dirty does not unequivocally define Roberta herself. Racism and prejudice do exist in the world we live in today, however one should understand that we all belong to the same race and things like culture or even things as insignificant as the color someone is does not define us, our character does.

References:

Morrison, Toni. Recitatif. Morrow, 1983.