The movie, Hidden Figures, has numerous diversity change agents, with varying degrees of impact. Two of the diversity change agents I identified are Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Al Harrison (Kevin Costner). Each character had the courage and the wiliness to do what was best for the community.
Dorothy Vaughn is a diversity change agent because she saw an opportunity for growth within NASA and capitalized on it. She recognized the IBM computer would equate to job loss for the West (African American) computers; however, instead of standing by as Vivian Mitchell’s (Kirsten Dunst) team did, she prepared. Dorothy risked her freedom numerous times along the journey including, taking the computer programming book from the library and the frequent visits to the IBM room. She not only taught herself how to program and operate the computer, she taught her entire team. This catapulted the African American women into the forefront of NASA programming, breaking through the barriers. Her desire for change came from within as the negative effects were specific to her life, not just the NASA mission.
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Al Harrison is also a diversity change agent because of his commitment to NASA’s mission; therefore, he did not let barriers of race and gender stonewall his progress.
Al accepted things for what they were at the given time related to diversity. Through his commitment to the mission, Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), an African American woman, was allowed into the most coveted and classified areas of NASA because Al did not see her race or gender, he saw her ability. He helped conquer her obstacles by action and showed that he valued her as a person, not just a “computer”. For example, during Katherine’s pivotal outburst of emotion she mentioned that she did not have pearls to wear. When Al was forced to end her assignment, his secretary gave Katherine the wedding gift from Al which was a set of
pearls. Given his authority, Al Harrison was able to speak loudly through his actions. Upon hearing that Katherine had to use the “colored” restroom across the campus he promptly removed the sign, by sledgehammer. Granted his action were motivated by his desire to complete the mission; however, it said that color would not stand in the way of progress. The abilities they possessed is what differentiated them. He also handed her the chalk during the pentagon meeting to calculate the landing location. She was first denied entry to the meeting and through Al’s confidence in her, she held the room much to her co-workers’ dismay. All benefited from the removal of the “colored” restroom and his no-nonsense approach to progress. The biggest lesson that I took away from the movie is to celebrate diversity. Each of us were created for a purpose; therefore, allowing prejudice to stand in the way is holding us back. The diversity that exists amongst us as human beings is what allows us to achieve the impossible. I found Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) to be the most heroic. She pursued her dream of becoming an engineer for NASA by challenging Virginia’s segregation laws. Mary recognized that there are multiple ways to fight a battle and did her research. Her pursuit of access to education paved the way for others by way of creating case law. The character that I identified with the most is Mary Jackson. She wasn’t afraid to speak her mind and took calculated risks to achieve her goals. She also challenged those around her to open their minds to different ways of fighting civil rights issues.
Hopefully, the rest of America will begin to appreciate her contributions to Hollywood. She was overlooked in Hollywood because she was shown lots of subtle and not so subtle racism which caused her to have limited opportunities in Hollywood. People need to know about Dorothy because she’s just one of the many unknown celebrities in the more cultural side of Hollywood. If the world gets to know a little bit more about other cultures unspoken heroes then we will be able to come together. Dorothy doesn't just speak for the underappreciated of the black community she speaks for all cultures unknown idols. She has proven that one day they will no longer be unknown or underappreciated that they will find their
Anne Moody had thought about joining the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), but she never did until she found out one of her roommates at Tougaloo college was the secretary. Her roommate asked, “why don’t you become a member” (248), so Anne did. Once she went to a meeting, she became actively involved. She was always participating in various freedom marches, would go out into the community to get black people to register to vote. She always seemed to be working on getting support from the black community, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. Son after she joined the NAACP, she met a girl that was the secretary to the ...
Hidden Figures is a film, it is the untold story of African-American women that is working in NASA, where they are being discriminate in the film. There is a segregation of bathrooms, staffs, facilities and libraries. Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson worked as “human computers”. When Katherine was assigned to help calculate launch and landing trajectories of NASA’s Space task group on east campus, it is the start of the most hard time of her and her groups. The short film does a good try in showing how racism and discrimination, and integrity and teamwork affect and help us in achieving goals.
Dorothy Irene Height was born in Richmond, Virginia on March 24th, 1912 and raised in Pennsylvania. Dorothy’s mother did not make it to many of her school events, which only fueled her to excel in school (White, 1999). She won a $1000 scholarship from Daughter Elk because of her participation in the national oratorical contest on the U.S Constitution and she was the valedictorian of her high school class. Dorothy wanted to go to Barnard in New York but they rejected her because they had already admitted their quota of black students, which happened to be two. She ended up going to New York University where she joined a sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, and became the head of the sorority. She then earned two degrees, a bachelors in education and a masters in psychology within six years (White, 1999). After college, she began her job as a social worker that she receiv...
Anne learned from a young age that if you were a Negro, hard work will get you something, but most of the time, that something isn’t enough for what you need. This is the same for the fight against racial inequality. Though the programs made an impact and were successful in their own smaller battles, the larger battle still had yet to be won. Anne’s experiences had raised several doubts
It even caused her to move to Michigan to become more of an activist for women. The fight against racism is linked to many more problems in the world. In the words of Dr. King: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” (feministactivism.com) This states that any unjust act can affect anyone all around the world. None of what Parks did was easy, but she set her mind to it and did it.
Jane Elliott Teaches Exercise Against Racism Her experiment on the Oprah Winfrey show in 1992 became world famous. Jane Elliott (62) carried out her brown eyes, blue eyes exercise, and a behaviour training that lets white people experience prejudice. and oppression does to you. What happens if you don't have any power? anymore and are subject to arbitrary discrimination, just cause you.
...s movement, to the current crossroads of affirmative action and other contemporary race issues. He transformed these issues from being matters of race to matters of humanity.
Rosenberg Spies In 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of passing information to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) concerning the construction of nuclear weapons. In 1953, the United States Government executed them. Some say, the Rosenbergs received their just punishment. Many historians feel that the trial was unfair, and that international claims for clemency were wrongly ignored. These historians claim that the Rosenbergs were assassinated by the US government.
motivational speaker, a black man, Adolph Brown, come to our job to speak about diversity in
In attempts to comply with federal laws and in relation to fairness, organizations and business in the United States started increasing women’s representation and employment of people of color. These efforts resulted in a trend where women representation across all types of jobs increased while the workplace was characterized with people from different cultural backgrounds. Organizations and businesses sported multicultural and multilingual hues that resulted in a paradigm shift in the concept of workplace diversity (Srikrishna,
“Throughout her professional life, [Anna Julia Cooper] advocated equal rights for women of color...and was particularly concerned with the civil, educational, and economic rights of Black women” (Thomas & Jackson, 2007, p. 363).
Katherine and her two friends that are also the same race, also worked for NASA. They changed African American history for the better and are now forever remembered as American heroes. An outstanding moment during the movie was when she was caught not present at her desk because she had to use the bathroom and had no other choice but to run close to half a mile each time she had to go. She returns in a rush only to find out her boss noticed, as was not working at her desk. She is asked why she was not at her desk and she stands her ground and firmly states that since she is a woman of color, she has to run to the other side of the building she works in and across the parking lot and into a back building which is almost equivalent to a half a mile or 4 blocks away.
The emergence of diversity in organizations can be traced to the 1960s when legislation was enacted to prohibit discrimination against ethnicity, gender, national origin, race, and religion. Even though workplace diversity origins began in the aftermath of World War I, it was not until 1961, when President John F Kennedy established the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), which was to end discrimination in employment by the government and its contractors (Cañas & Sondak, 2011). Workplace diversity continued to be advanced through the years by Presidents Johnson and Nixon administrations.