Hidden Figures In Richard Wright's Native Son By Margot Lee Shetterly

Research shows that a parents background can easily influence any children that they have according to www.qualifax.com. Margot Lee Shetterly grew up with a well educated background by having a father who worked for NASA, and a mother who was an English professor at Hampton University. Due to her father’s career, Shetterly knew multiple black women who worked for NASA and became fascinated by what they contributed with their proficient skills in math and problem solving. Further research on these bright women gave Shetterly the desire to make their stories heard by writing Hidden Figures in 2016. The inspiring story of African-American culture grew increasingly popular, and even got the attention of Theodore Melfi when he wanted Shetterly’s
Despite having the desire to work hard for achievement, some minorities still had few options. In Richard Wright’s short story Native Son, he described why his actions lead to the murder of a young woman while his lawyer was setting up a court argument, “Why should I want to do anything? I ain’t got a chance. I don’t know nothing. I’m just black and they make the laws. /.../ I wanted to be an aviator once. But they wouldn’t let me go to the school where I was suppose’ to learn it.” Due to his lack of options, (said character) suffered from the issue of white power in society and resorted to actions that began from the way he was treated. Having a lack of opportunity is demonstrated in Hidden Figures when the narrator describes the unnecessary obstacles that Mary had to go through to become an engineer just because of her ethnicity and gender. “If Mary had applied for a job as janitor, the doors to the school would swing wide open. As a professional engineer-in-training with a plan to occupy the building for the nefarious purpose of advancing her education, she needed to petition the city of Hampton for “special permission” to attend classes in the whites-only school. ”
Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Johnson, and Mary Jackson are all women who made extraordinary contributions to NASA, yet they did not always receive credit for their work. “Women, on the other hand, had to wield their intellects like a scythe, hacking away against the stubborn underbrush of low expectations. /.../ Even a woman who had worked closely with an engineer on the content of a research report was rarely rewarded by seeing her name alongside his on the final publication” (Shetterly page #). Furthermore, many women in STEM do not get equal treatment by failing to gain accreditation for their work. As someone who is heavily involved with robotics, I have experienced and witnessed moments of female discrimination. During a college interview, a friend of mine described the different subgroups within our robotics team to the man who interviewed her, “We have fabrication, programming, electrical, marketing-” when she was suddenly interrupted by his comment, “Oh, marketing. So they have something for girls?” This ignorant comment left her astonished as more memories of inequity came flooding back to her mind. In the end, even the most intelligent women face moments of inequality in