This commentary has taken the longest of any I have written. Partly for questioning the subject mater as something important and for the fact that when I restarted my blog I thought I could avoid commentary about the news or even really current events.
My goal with this new format and restart was to turn my focus from outward to inward. My purpose less a voice targeting topics for which you can find countless commentaries but content offering thoughts and insight on how I should live. Yet sometimes not commenting about recent events becomes almost impossible, particularly when they touch the issue of how I should live.
Most that know me know I am a skeptic. I tend to not trust what is presented to me as fact particularly if those presenting the “facts” are unknown or have a poor track record of telling the whole truth. In recent weeks I experienced two events that set off my “cant be true” radar. It all started with a headline now several weeks old, that proclaimed “Bolt Stripped of 2008 Gold Medal”. Yes, I clicked to read. Had the headline read “Nesta Carter Stripped of Medal” I doubt I would have noticed the article as I don’t know that name. Bolt I recognize. The truth of the story is a teammate had been found guilty of doping and the entire team suffered. The story true but the headline no more than click bait. I felt sorry for Bolt, humiliated in a headline only because his name was more recognizable.
In these same recent weeks DeAnn and I went to a movie which I enjoyed, it was a good movie. Had it been total fiction I would not be writing this blog, yet at the very beginning the credits in very prominent text were the words “based on actual events”. “Hidden Figures”
The real Katherine G. Johnson says “I didn’t feel the segregation at NASA, because everybody there was doing research” and “You had a mission and you worked on it, and it was important to you to do your job…and play bridge at lunch. I didn’t feel any segregation. I knew it was there, but I didn’t feel it.” In a time where racial inequality and heavy prejudice existed, while most of society mistreated blacks, 300 co-workers of Katherine made her feel an equal most of the time. Her story is remarkable as is the place she worked. Kathrine was not just the only black woman on the team for Alan Shepard’s and John Glenn’s space flights which is one message of the movie, she was the only black and the only woman. NASA was a white men’s club, not a whites only club, she broke two barriers. The movie portrayed the world of her time accurately, but it lied about her co-workers. The movie failed in telling the real truth. The movie described her co-workers as biased and prejudice. While true of the outside world here was an organization using the best and brightest regardless of skin color. In a prejudice world NASA was populated with highly intelligent and enlightened people that looked passed color or sex. I am sure I do not understand the oppression Mrs. Johnson suffered during her life, being a white male but most of what she suffered was outside her workplace.
Dorothy Vaughan another character, another black woman who achieved success at NASA was portrayed as becoming the first black woman supervisor at NASA. That is a fact and is worthy of note, yet in the movie she received this title in the time of John Glen, in the time of Martin Luther King Jr., in the time society was taking a hard look at itself and changing for the better, in the movie she is portrayed as demanding what is her due. The fact is her achievement came in 1948. How much more historic is her raise, her grit. Her success came 7 years before Rosa Parks refused to move, 9 years before King’s first national speech. The most basic facts in the movie about her are true. But not only was she the first black woman supervisor, she was the first black supervisor of either sex. The fact she taught herself Fortran and the fact she supervised a segregated team is true. The truth the movie portrayal fails to mention… her brilliance. She was brilliant, managing a team of brilliant women. Her brilliance is watered down with humor and focusing on her desire to become a supervisor. Her courage is watered down by moving the timeline to make it fit a movie, her bravery is diluted. Her own words “I changed what I could, and what I couldn’t, I endured” are not quoted in the movie, but speak to a truly courageous and brilliant woman. That’s the person I am interested in not the one served up to me in a Hollywood partial truth.
Mary Jackson, the third women in this trio of very smart women, petitioned the City of Hampton to allow her to attend the classes not a federal judge as portrayed in the movie. That’s sad in that it elevates her pleading for further education and down plays the fact that even when laws are just and fair local enforcement can be unjust and unlawful. Her fight while important was a local one. The truth being that a majority of society knew what was right, the prejudice while evil was held by a few, but those few can have detrimental impacts. The truth is we have to fight to maintain justice. There is a struggle between what we know is right and how some portions of society behave. We forget that most injustices today are the result of an ignorant few and all of society needs to fight that ignorance.
The portrayal of Mary Jackson is shallow maybe because the movie is not focused on her. The movie portrays here as someone mostly concerned with herself, her own struggles, as somewhat demanding. Her obituary tells me that I would like to and should know more, “The Peninsula recently lost a woman of courage, a most gracious heroine, Mary Winston Jackson. Mary was a champion for her race, other minorities, and women. She suffered many indignities while holding steadfast to her personal attributes and compassion for others”
Why do we suffer from fake news, titillating headlines, and “true” movies with more fiction than truth? Likely because we want entertainment rather than enlightenment. We desire titillation more than truth. We are lazy in our pursuits, leaving the work to others who mislead us for their purposes.
The world needs more guardians of truth. Be one, by simply telling the truth always and more importantly completely.
David
