This morning, as Trump announced cuts in education and science budgets to radically increase military spending, Bugsy and I watched Hidden Figures. One of the many perks of the homeschooled life, I watched her react to seeing a period of American history and scientific achievement that I lived through at about her same age. I cried during several parts of the movie, she pointed her pinkie at the screen (our 'allowed' middle-finger replacement) many more times, angered by the segregation and bigotry that had so deeply shamed me as a child. We cheered those three amazing woman for their courage and determination.
We paused the movie a few times to talk about what it was like back then - a time of shining stars and darkest shadows. About being a southern white child raised in a white household by a black woman whom I loved enough to call "Ma" but who would never eat at our table or have her own room. About her sitting in the car, waiting for us to bring her a meal from a "Whites Only" restaurant when we travelled. I told her about my first bus ride, when she took my little brother and I downtown to see President Kennedy's last parade, and about wanting to sit in the front but couldn't.
"Niggers in the back," the bus driver growled.
I'd never heard that word but I could read the sign that said "Colored Section".
"Ma," I whispered, tugging at her hand, "the bus looks the same back here. Why does it say this part is colored?"I told Bugsy about a time when astronauts were America's Super Heroes and every little boy wanted to be one when he grew up. Little girls like me could only dream of marrying one...
When the film revealed that the first NASA computers could make 24,000 calculations a second, we Googled the difference between their computing power and her iPhone 6, discovering that the little thing she held in her hand was 32,600 times more powerful than the ones that sent John Glenn into orbit.
The movie ending, I asked her what parallels she saw between now and then, fully expecting her to say that things were better for women or we'd become better people or that our scientific advances were incredible.
"Mom, I can only see Trump bringing chaos and war and hate."
This ending made me cry shameful tears, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment