Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

Both men said [Trevor] Noah distinguished himself from other comics by resisting labels and “genre-based comedy.” [Schalk] Bezuidenhout noted that Noah always identified himself as a mixed-race South African raised in straitened circumstances in Soweto without “using it as a crutch.” Contemporaries who have shared the stage with him say he’s unusually attuned to the audience, shifting direction based on the feel in the room, and Bezuidenhout has seen Noah drop chunks of material based on the city he’s performing in. This was a quality that a number of immigrants in South Africa had already mentioned to me. Omega Chembhere, a waiter, told me that when he had arrived from Zimbabwe 10 years earlier, much of South African pop culture had seemed inaccessible. “Trevor’s different, so good at it,” he said. “His strength is that everything springs from his experience in life, but you understand his reality because he makes an effort to explain.”

Douglas Foster, “Trevor Noah’s World,” The Atlantic, April 5, 2015. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/trevor-noah-world-south-africa-comedy/389697.

Katherine Johnson is not the first black woman to accomplish some of the things she did but the first woman, period.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2017-03-13 01:52Z by Steven

“I’ve seen some of the interviews NASA has done with its modern figures’—women of color at NASA who are scientists, mathematicians and engineers, and they make me really happy,” [Heather] Graham says, “because I want the message to get out that Katherine Johnson’s achievements aren’t history but rather the beginning of a movement of women in space science! Katherine Johnson is not the first black woman to accomplish some of the things she did but the first woman, period. She’s such an all purpose hero!”

Linda Billings, “Before “Hidden Figures,” There Was a Rock Opera About NASA’s Human Computers,” Air & Space Magazine, February 3, 2017. http://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/hidden-figures-there-was-rock-opera-about-nasas-human-computers-180961980/.

Tags: Air & Space, Air & Space Magazine, Heather Graham, Heather V. Graham, Heather Valeah Graham, Katherine Johnson, Linda Billings, NASA

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Before “Hidden Figures,” There Was a Rock Opera About NASA’s Human Computers

Posted in Articles, Arts, Biography, History, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2017-03-13 01:30Z by Steven

Before “Hidden Figures,” There Was a Rock Opera About NASA’s Human Computers

Air & Space Magazine
2017-02-03

Linda Billings, Senior Editor

Katherine Johnson’s inspirational story came to the Baltimore stage in 2015, thanks to another space scientist.

“Hidden Figures,” the story of three African-American women whose mathematical skill helped NASA launch astronauts into space and back in the early 1960s, has been both a critical and box office success. With more than $100 million in ticket sales and a stack of award nominations, the movie has inspired audiences with a true story made even more powerful by virtue of the fact that it was largely untold for 50 years. And still mostly unknown is the story of another NASA scientist who beat Hollywood to the punch by putting “human computer” Katherine Johnson’s saga on stage almost two years ago.

Heather Graham is an astrobiologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center outside Washington, D.C. She’s also a gamer, a feminist, and a member of the Baltimore Rock Opera Society. In May 2015, the society staged Graham’s one-act rock opera, “Determination of Azimuth,” which portrays how Johnson and her colleagues Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan, were ignored and demeaned on the job at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, because they were black and female. The story has a happy ending: Their work was validated, their expertise accepted. But they had to endure racism and sexism along the way…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Air & Space, Air & Space Magazine, Baltimore, Determination of Azimuth, Dorothy Vaughan, Heather Graham, Heather V. Graham, Heather Valeah Graham, Katherine Johnson, Linda Billings, Mary Jackson, Maryland, NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration

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Mixed Race Studies

Katherine Johnson is not the first black woman to accomplish some of the things she did but the first woman, period.

Before “Hidden Figures,” There Was a Rock Opera About NASA’s Human Computers

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