TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2024 HIDDEN FIGURES

 TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2024 HIDDEN FIGURES

The book and movie “Hidden Figures” was based on a real story.

Let’s do a review. Three Black Women were hired at NASA prior to John Glenn’s multiple orbits of the Earth. Previous NASA events were to send monkeys and then men on suborbital flights. But this was going to be different. John Glenn was to go into orbit around the Earth three times. At some point, he would fire his retro rockets and return to Earth.  

There is a lot of math involved here—and as a person with a bachelor's and master's in mathematics, it is complicated. For reentry, there is the earth's rotational speed, the spaceship's speed, and a desired landing site. My calculus is old, but with multiple factors and the rate of change in velocity so that the spaceship would reenter not too fast and burn up through the atmosphere or too slow and not return.  

One of the scenes in the movie shows one of the women being scolded for leaving her desk for longer periods.  The movie claims that she needed to use a “Blacks only” bathroom, and there wasn’t a black bathroom in the building she was in.  I vaguely remember two drinking fountains somewhere - whites and blacks.  (When I was in junior high school, we drove to Alabama to visit my aunt Geri and family, and I think someplace on that trip to the “deep south”, we ran into the phenomenon.

The slogan was “separate but equal”.  That was struck down in 1954 with the Brown vs. Board of Education court ruling.  But it took years for some white environments to implement it (if they have even implemented it).  There were white schools and black schools - both with the charge to educate children - but the white schools were far above the black schools in terms of facilities. In towns, drinking fountains (some people called the bubblers) were on the streets and other places.  How dare a black person take a drink out of a white drinking fountain.

In 1963, the University of Alabama admitted its first black students - and Governor George Wallace tried to stop it.  “STATES RIGHTS”  over “FEDERAL RIGHTS.”  Could the federal government issue mandates to integrate schools?  

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Eventually, instead of white and black bathrooms and drinking fountains.  There was one bathroom for women and one for men.  [Note, in the Movie Hidden Figures, the administrator took a crowbar to knock down the signs for “white women’s bathroom”, and “black women’s bathroom”.  In my research, the central black woman finally started using the white restroom.[

It hasn’t always been easy since then.  But it isn’t as overt as it was.  We’ve had a black man as President of the United States.  We’ve had a black woman running for President of the United States (and - behind the scenes, racism and genderism).  

Yesterday I wrote about the new rules to separate transgender women from using the ladies restroom.  Hmm - it seems the same type of discrimination about white and black women, but now, it is CIS women and transgender women.  

Did the segregated restrooms in the South work?  What if a black woman had just been in one stall, and then a white woman entered the same stall?  Would the white woman somehow get “cooties” from sitting on the same toilet seat?  

Likewise, would a CIS woman get “cooties” from sitting on a toilet seat that was used by a transgender woman?

And, yet, it is happening. 

From Odessa Texas, we have this from July 23, 2024

“ODESSA — The City Council on Tuesday banned transgender people from using restrooms outside of the sex assigned to them at birth, following an emotionally charged exchange between residents and city leaders.

In a 5-2 vote, members of the council expanded a 1989 ordinance that prohibits individuals from entering restrooms of the opposite sex, suggesting they were doing so to protect Odessans and their own families.

Residents pleaded with the council, arguing that such proposals were divisive, stoked fear among the community, and would further stretch city services.”

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I have commented before that the pastor of my previous church forbade me from using the larger, multi-stall bathrooms, and I could use the single bathrooms located at other locations in the church. I am not sure why this was done. Am I a threat to other women who would be in that room? I really can’t use the men’s bathroom—my body is no longer designed to use a urinal.  

It seems as if history is repeating itself.  Black women fought to use white restrooms; transgender women fought to use women’s restrooms.  

LOVE WINS

LOVE TRANSFORMS

Karen Anne White, November 12, 2024