No blacks in the JPL mission control?

Because no one both qualified and of African descent applied?

Brett

Is this known as trolling?

Hard to say. If so, it's not a very good troll, and it wasn't cross-posted.

Brett

Perhaps it's because race is an ill-defined concept and some of the people you were looking at were actually black and you didn't know it.

Heck, go back far enough and we're all of African origin!

I just got my test results today from Ancestry by DNA. It turns out I'm 87% Indo-European, 13% Sub-Saharan African. No detectable Asian or Native American ancestry.

I don't look like I'm 13% black. Heck, I wasn't permitted to join an African-American professional organization because I look (their words, not mine) "lily white."

So who knows? There might have been loads of black folks there.

If you were born in the United States, there's a good chance you're part black like me.

Zooty

PS: Why did I get the Ancestry by DNA test? Because technology is no good if you can't play with it! Besides, there's family rumors that we're descendants of Crispus Attucks. Might actually be some truth to the rumor!

--------

Talk about a set up for a bad and tasteless joke....

HDS

Who is/are Crispus Attucks?

My wife commented that she didn't see any women in the control room either (though I know there were a few).

-JT

Shovel Recovery wrote:

Jeff

There were a few women... Somebody had to keep the coffee cups full...... [ Just kidding.. I hope your wife has a sense of humor ] Actually there were more than a few at least 2 different female voices manning stations during the polling that I heard. I was watching LIVE for a few hours.... and quite a few in and about the control room......

Bobby B

The first man to die in the American Revolution...

Mario Perdue NAR #22012 Sr. L2 for email drop the planet

"X-ray-Delta-One, this is Mission Control, two-one-five-six, transmission concluded."

I didn't see anyone as good looking as I am.

I think it's a conspiracy.

8-)

Phil Stein

So as far as he knew at the time this was the most futile gesture he had ever even heard of.

Makes sense his ancestor would challenge TRA.

If the results are even remotely similar we may just have something here!

Jerry

Because they're all on a different shift...? ;-)

because they hire for skill and not by skin color?

Yes I heard the women too. It was my wife who only watched for five or ten minutes that made the comment. Still, the number of women was relatively small. This doesn't surprise me, look at who attends our rocket launches, for whatever reasons rockets and space just seem to appeal more to men.

-JT

bobbyb wrote:

He was the "first to defy, the first to die." Crispus Attucks, the escaped slave, led the 30-odd Americans against the British in what became known as the Boston Massacre. He was killed by the British. At this site:

it's amazing how the defense of the British sounds so darned much like the average "cop kills unarmed black" coroner's inquests around here. If you notice, the British were found innocent, too. Thin red line and all that....

He was one of the three blacks they were allowed to teach us about in history in grade school. The other two were Frederick Douglas and George Washington Carver. Of course, Carver was my favorite. I've always had far more ties to the nerd community than any ethnic group!

The site reminded me of something I'd forgotten - Attucks is thought to be half Native American.

If that's true, I might not be related to him. His mother would have been at most 1/256th of my ancestors at her level, so it's quite possible it might not have shown up on the test. Then again, by the same reasoning, neither would he!

13% >> .4% I suspect there's a lot more folks of African origin than just old Crispus.

Zooty

Go back further and you will find we are 98% related to the fly. Maybe that why we keep wanting to fly because it is a subconscious throwback to the good old days.

Arnold

You couldn't see them because they were either on the floor or under the consoles.

Crispus Attucks was an unlucky black laborer and dock worker who happened to be present in the second line of a group of Bostonian drunks bent on looting the King's tax house on March 5th of 1770. He and several others were shot as the British fire a volley into an attacking mob. The event became known as the Boston Massacre, in no large part because the wood carving that Paul Revere disseminated was deliberately "spun" to show the helpless citizens of Boston being gunned down by British troops. Well intended people, looking desperately for a Black Revolutionary war hero, have continued the legend and elevated Attucks to hero/martyr status. There were true Black heroes of the revolution, but Attucks was hardly one.

Leave it to Irvine to change the subject from blacks at JPL to an anti-TRA thread.

No wonder 8 out of 10 rocketeers surveyed dislike this guy.