HIDDEN FIGURES, ALTERNATIVE FACTS AND ANOTHER WEEK IN TRUMP LAND

The latest stupid alternative fact spit out by the netherworld of the racist right is that the compelling and award-winning film, “Hidden Figures” is a falsified piece of “politically correct” propaganda. A number of creepy websites, all to the right of Breitbart, are insisting that the untold story of three African American women who helped launch NASA’s space program in the 1960s is a total fabrication. (Here, here and here.)

One of the downsides of Internet technology is that crazy people have a platform. The nuts, bigots and lunatics have been with us always. I used to work nights in a newsroom. People called with all sorts of idiotic story ideas, particularly after the bars closed. One man insisted he had proof that thousands of Jews were quietly moving into town and planned to take complete control of all financial institutions. Another guy was certain his backyard squirrels were wired by the Feds to monitor his conversations. It was no big deal. We just hung up on them. Now they all have websites. Including, no doubt, the squirrels.

It’s been that kind of week. There was a Muslim ban that the president said wasn’t a ban. Then Alternative Facts Queen Kellyanne Conway defended the ban by pointing to the “Bowling Green Massacre”, only to find out later that there never was such a massacre. And now we have the white power nuts totally outraged over the notion that the white men launched into space 50 years ago might have had some support on the ground from black women.

I saw “Hidden Figures” on Inauguration Day. It was a wonderful, uplifting diversion from the installation of a president whose campaign was fueled, at least in part, by a longing for the good old days of white male privilege. The film was made from Margot Lee Shetterly’s book with the same name. Both were based on the following established facts: Prior to the days of IBM and Apple, the calculations for space exploration were done by mathematicians and their slide rules and adding machines. In NASA’s facilities in Langley, Virginia, these folks were called computers. During those Jim Crow days in Langley, there was a “Computer East” for white employees and a “Computer West” for blacks. The film tells the story of three female computers from the west group: Katherine Johnson, (Taraji P. Hensen), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe). Their work, and particularly the genius-level mathematical skills of Hensen’s character, Katherine, played a vital role in a number of NASA’s most spectacular achievements, including John Glenn’s orbit of the earth in 1962.

In many ways, the story was as sad as it was compelling. Those women persevered through the abhorrently oppressive conditions of segregation. Yet, thanks to their spirit and incredible skill, they made it possible for a very white America to achieve greatness in space. The depressingly sad part of the story is that it took more than 50 years for it to be told. Of course, the racist webmasters point to that delay as evidence of fabrication. It was well known, they say, that the space agency was all white in the 1960s and that “Hidden Figures” is simply an attempt to erase white history.

Actually, the racists were partly right. The space program, according to Smithsonian research, was lily white back in the late 1930s and very early 1940s. But, thanks to pressure from civil rights leaders, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order in 1941 demanding that the Langley operation and other federal agencies immediately open their doors to black employees. That was back in the day when presidential orders were based on inclusion instead of exclusion. Not only that, the star of it all, Katherine Johnson, is very much alive at 98 and continues to tell her own story. She was awarded the Medal of Freedom by former president Obama in 2015.

Of course, bigotry has always lurked in the shadows of the web. Sadly, it has now left those shadows and is performing on the main stage. The sites decrying the whitewash of “Hidden Figures,” are filled with posts of support and alignment with the Trump administration. For example, these pieces: “Trump Them Again – Use Executive Orders to Stem Creeping Bilingualism”; “Racketeering Refugees: What the Million Marching Pussyhatters Really Want”; and “Trump’s Wall Says to the World ‘This is OUR Country, We Decide Who Comes Here.’”

No, not every Trump voter is a racist. Yet it is undeniable that the right wing populism that propelled him, like similar movements around the world, was fueled by anger over changing demographics that have diluted the power of white privilege. Writer Zach Beauchamp, in a fascinating and well-researched piece for Vox.com, argued that the outcome of the 2016 presidential election had less to do with economic angst in the heartland and more with white antipathy toward a changing population. Wrote Beauchamp, “What unites far-right politicians and their supporters, on both sides of the Atlantic, is a set of regressive attitudes toward difference. Racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia — and not economic anxiety — are their calling cards.”

The challenge for those of us who believe that America’s greatness lies in those differences, in our embrace of diversity, is to draw a bright line for the battles to come. There can be room for compromise on health care, tax reform, education funding and the environment. But when it comes to matters of basic human rights, dignity, nondiscrimination and equal opportunity, there can be no retreat, no surrender. If we return to the days of Hidden Figures, America will not only have sacrificed its greatness, it will have lost its soul.