Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

Half-caste is a term used to describe people of mixed race or ethnicity. Caste comes from the Latin castus, meaning pure, and the derivative Portuguese and Spanish casta, meaning race. The term originates from the Indian caste system, where a person of ‘lesser’ or half-caste would be deemed to be of a ‘lower class’. While the origins of the term are derogatory, its usage has evolved to give it the more objective meaning described above.

Half caste is a term used in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking parts of the world. An example is a child of black African and white European parentage. The term mulatto (from Spanish “Mulato”) has also been used for this particular mixture. Both terms are considered impolite and potentially offensive in the U.S., as the words have been used pejoratively in the past to ostracize and isolate the offspring of such unions. For example, “children of the plantation” (the children of African-American slaves and their European-American masters in the U.S. Southern states) were not accepted as heirs, and in most cases, the relationship was never acknowledged, and “half-caste” conveyed the deliberate exclusion. The term ‘half caste’ was once commonly used in the U.K. and remains in occasional use today.

Wikipedia

NASA Renames Facility After Katherine Johnson of ‘Hidden Figures’ Fame

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2019-02-25 01:25Z by Steven

NASA Renames Facility After Katherine Johnson of ‘Hidden Figures’ Fame

The New York Times
2019-02-23

Elisha Brown

Katherine Johnson, left, and Christine Darden, two of the first African-American women to work as mathematicians at NASA. The agency named a facility in Ms. Johnson’s honor on Friday. Chet Strange for The New York Times

NASA on Friday officially renamed a facility in West Virginia after Katherine Johnson, an African-American mathematician and centenarian whose barrier-breaking career was depicted in the film “Hidden Figures.”

The 2016 film, based on a book released earlier that year, depicted the struggle of Ms. Johnson and other black women for equality at NASA during the height of the space age and segregation. The mathematician tracked the trajectories of crucial missions in the 1960s.

“I am thrilled we are honoring Katherine Johnson in this way as she is a true American icon who overcame incredible obstacles and inspired so many,” Jim Bridenstine, the administrator of NASA, said Friday in a statement. A dedication ceremony is to be held at a later time.

The newly renamed facility, which is in Fairmont, W.Va., will now be known as the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility. The program housed at the facility monitors the software used to track high-profile NASA missions, according to the agency’s website…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Christine Darden, Elisha Brown, Katherine Johnson, NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, New York Times, The New York Times, West Virginia

Comments Off on NASA Renames Facility After Katherine Johnson of ‘Hidden Figures’ Fame

On Being a Black Female Math Whiz During the Space Race

Posted in Articles, Biography, History, Media Archive, United States on 2016-09-06 02:48Z by Steven

On Being a Black Female Math Whiz During the Space Race

The New York Times
2016-09-05

Cara Buckley, Culture Reporter

Katherine Johnson, left, and Christine Darden, two of the former NASA mathematicians in the book “Hidden Figures.”
Credit: Chet Strange for The New York Times

HAMPTON, Va. — Growing up here in the 1970s, in the shadow of Langley Research Center, where workers helped revolutionize air flight and put Americans on the moon, Margot Lee Shetterly had a pretty fixed idea of what scientists looked like: They were middle class, African-American and worked at NASA, like her dad.

It would be years before she learned that this was far from the American norm. And that many women in her hometown defied convention, too, by having vibrant, and by most standards, unusual careers.

Black and female, dozens had worked at the space agency as mathematicians, often under Jim Crow laws, calculating crucial trajectories for rockets while being segregated from their white counterparts. For decades, as the space race made heroes out of lantern-jawed astronauts, the stories of those women went largely untold.

Four of them are the subjects of Ms. Shetterly’s first book, “Hidden Figures,” a history being released on Tuesday by William Morrow. The book garnered an early burst of attention because its movie version, starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe, is scheduled for a year-end release and set for an Oscars run. The movie rights were snapped up weeks after Ms. Shetterly sold her book proposal in 2014, and well before she started writing the book in earnest, a disorientingly fast, if exhilarating, turn…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Cara Buckley, Christine Darden, Katherine Johnson, Margot Lee Shetterly, NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, New York Times, The New York Times

Comments Off on On Being a Black Female Math Whiz During the Space Race

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30

Mixed Race Studies

NASA Renames Facility After Katherine Johnson of ‘Hidden Figures’ Fame

On Being a Black Female Math Whiz During the Space Race

Pages

Categories

Calendar of Posts

Links

Meta