The most important book of 2017
I’ve been reading the book Hidden Figures which talks about “The Untold Story of the African American Women who Helped Win the Space Race”.
Near the end of chapter five it has this paragraph that illustrates the life of the West Computers, which was the name for the African American women division that worked as computers for the military. It’s a life of constant battle against segregation, trying to defend the same country that’s putting them behind. Here’s the text, emphasis mine.
Their facilities might be separate, but as far as the West Computers were concerned, they would prove themselves equal or better, having internalized the Negro theorem of needing to be twice as good to get half as far. They wore their professional clothes like armor. They wielded their work like weapons, warding off the presumption of inferiority because they were Negro or female. They corrected each other’s work and policed their ranks like soldiers against tardiness, sloppy appearance, and the perception of loose morals. They warded off the negative stereotypes that haunted Negroes like shadows, using tough love to protect both the errant individual and the group from her failings.
The phrase needing to be twice as good to get half as far really hit home. I don’t want to add any more comments because I don’t want to trivialize the suffering of others based on my experience, but once thing is sure: there’s a lot to learn from that paragraph.
In these times where we try to be more inclusive in tech, and despite the many efforts we keep failing so badly, I recommend to read this book to understand the daily struggle people suffer to get by in our industry, people that are equally capable as their colleagues (and sometimes even smarter than them). Keep in mind always that there might be that colleague next to you that you don’t even notice, and they might be fighting to be heard, to have a voice, to matter, but their efforts end up being invisible to the rest of us since our backgrounds and histories don’t allow us to see them.
