Brett Childers
Dr. Robert Birdwell
ENG-101-F06 English Composition 1
March 18, 2018
Stereotype of Race in the Workplace
Tensions are running high at NASA following the successful launch of Sputnik, and the United States is racing to launch the first man into space before the Soviet Union. All the while three black women by the names of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson are straining for proper recognition of their talents. These women had to fight against workplace racism and segregation during the climax of the Space Race, and ultimately they contributed their talents to launching difficult and high-risk missions. They not only had to strain to exceed race and gender barriers, but also to become mathematicians and engineers in a field that was commonly a man’s field of work. Countless times being criticized for attempting to be in the math field. In the movie Hidden Figures we follow the stories of these three extraordinary women and
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When Dorothy lets the lead engineer know of Mary she gets invited to the team of engineers, by the lead engineer named Zielinski, a Polish-Jewish immigrant who escaped from the Holocaust, to work on the heat shields of the space ship. When she figures out how to fix an issue with the heat shields Zielinski encourages her to seek formal engineering certification. She however receives some push back from her husband saying, that there’s no such thing as a woman engineer-at least, not a black one-and blaming her for not being home often enough to take proper care of their children. And that she not even bothers going after this job as an engineer. She does however and petitions a judge for her to take the necessary classes, at a segregated high school, that will allow her to apply for an engineering position at NASA. She represents herself making a plea that is as much about the judge and his outlook as it is about her, and her works