Spending more dollars on exploring solar-systems than school systems is cause for critique, not celebration.
—
Yesterday, as the Internet raved on the trending topic of America’s more than nine year journey to fly by Pluto, a feeling took over me. It was a feeling of shame and sadness, a feeling that I believe Mr. Gil Scott-Heron felt in 1970 when he recited “Whitey on the Moon,” a response to Neil Armstrong’s moon landing.
Mr. Scott-Heron, a Black man, wasn’t proud of his country’s accomplishment, as he was more concerned with social and personal issues, like the rising cost of food and the doctor’s bill that followed a rat biting his sister.
“A rat done bit my sister Nell with whitey on the moon. Her face and arms began to swell and whitey’s on the moon. I can’t pay no doctor bills, but whitey’s on the moon. Ten years from now, I’ll be payin’ still, While whitey’s on the moon. The man just upped my rent last night, cause whitey’s on the moon,” Mr. Scott-Heron said on the 1970 recording.
The context of Mr. Scott-Heron’s poem appears to be timeless, and I’m sure upon conception he was aware it would be.
For nearly a decade, America has invested what I would assume is billions, if not trillions, of dollars to reach Pluto, not to mention whatever other capital investments were made to explore space.
However, for nearly a decade—and longer—America has invested what I would is assume less than half of NASA’s budget on modernizing public education and recreation in the inner-cities.
Spending more dollars on exploring solar-systems than improving school systems is cause for gross critique, not mass celebration.
I don’t applaud America for what my fellow countrymen perceive is a milestone. To the contrary, I shame this rich nation for its skewed priorities. The type of decision making that says unseen space is more valued than an occupied place is not one that deserves respect nor admiration.
And though access to quality public education ranks high on my set of values, which is why I referred to it early on in this piece, other social issues—like veterans’ quality of life, diversity in the technology and news industry, and homelessness—also weigh on me deeply.
Homeless Americans—many of them veterans or LGBTQIA youth—sleep outside of multi-million dollar priorities every night, yet there’s no high profile federal push to expand homeless shelters or improve the existing ones.
Young students, many of them black and brown, everyday scrounge their spaces and places for basic supplies, like pencils, toilet paper and hand soap, yet coming up with a sustainable funding formula for public education seems to be like pulling teeth.
Am I, an educated black man, being asked to believe that it’s easier to calculate the distance from Earth to Pluto than it is to develop a funding formula that’ll ensure every student has access to best teaching and learning resources?
I see young black boys often play basketball at an abandoned school yard illuminated only by a car’s headlights, yet I’m expected to marvel at the clarity in which a space camera captured a planet?
Sorry, but I just don’t give a f*ck.
For me, and many in my community, its hard to focus on outer space when the spaces and places right in front of us are over-policed with bad and good cops who are indistinguishable.
I abhor the truth that a race must prove their humanity to the mainstream society, while the mainstream society ignores them, and, instead, searches for humanity and life forms elsewhere.
Today may be a great day for many. It may be, for some, an occasion worth gathering loved ones and displaying American pride.
For me, however, today, and every day, until this country does right by its own words, will be a cause for gross critique.
*Tune into 900amWURD or 900amWURD.com every Friday evening during the 6 o’clock hour to hear me relive #TheWeekThatWas*
Thanks for reading. Until next time, I’m Flood the Drummer® & I’m Drumming for JUSTICE!™
—
Photo: NASA
This article contains an utter LIE (as I can only assume you did check your fact…as its a simple one to find..and chose to create your own one to fit your purpose) and it should be corrected for those that dont read the comments, and take what you said at face value… You claim the USG spends ‘twice’ on NASA than they do on ‘Education’…. Im not going to furnish you, the reader of this comment, with the answer here…it really is such a simple statistic to find, that I invite anyone interested to use google, or whatever search engine……and… Read more »
This may be counterintuitive; but consider for a moment that social justice just might not (after all) be best achieved, forwarded, or well-served by simply & blatantly juxtaposing the perpetual overarching lens of race, class and/or gender onto each and every human activity or motive, at every single turn. Knowledge and scientific discovery transcends- One may debate the motive or the means or the judiciousness of what led to discoveries (or the persons who made them) but once illuminated, the pure knowledge of our universe is itself transcendent; I would conjecture that that which is objectively, scientifically truthful & freely… Read more »
We complain about the peaceful pursuit of knowledge as though it was a waste yet say nothing of the truly staggering amount of waste perpetrated by Washington through the Pentagon’s programs that either don’t work (like the Joint Strike Fighter; ten years overdue, $2.1 Trillion dollars in the hole and still can’t carry out it’s mission as well as the plane it’s replacing), The Abrams tank (which the Pentagon advised Congress they have more of than they need yet which Congress can’t bring itself to stop buying), the Hum-Vee (Pentagon audit found that we have a 15 year supply of… Read more »
The moment you revealed your complaints were based on assumptions and not facts, you stopped being interesting.
“For nearly a decade, America has invested what I would assume is billions, if not trillions, of dollars to reach Pluto, not to mention whatever other capital investments were made to explore space.” Not even. $700 million for the New Horizons project. Research – even in apparently unrelated fields – can produce results that benefit the general population. Big research labs/conglomerates are pretty good at value for money, as well as extending applicability of their work beyond their immediate goals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies And of all things to get hissy about. How much *more* money is spent reinforcing your country’s unnecessarily bloated… Read more »
Sorry. You are completely off-base on this. (And I love me some Gil Scott-Heron.) New Horizons cost was $640 million, saved up for 15 years. NASA’s budget is *tiny*, and were we to disband it today, the effect on the US economy would be negligible. You could build one or two new schools with the cost of this mission, but you couldn’t staff them. As another black thinker, Neil deGrasse Tyson, said on this topic: “I don’t think they’ve thought it through. Most people who don’t agree say, “We have problems here on Earth. Let’s focus on them.” Well, we… Read more »
StJason, that was an awesome & succinct response – Thank-you! I WISH America actually DID spend something like the *trillions* of dollars on NASA (and the attendant science & research) that most people just arbitrarily assume it has when it doesn’t. If bound and determined, the OP could pick on NASA and Pluto if that is the way that the trending Internet winds are blowing today; but at least it should crunch the real numbers and prioritize a bit more, maybe with the F-35 JSF and a few other budgetary atrocities drawing more of the ire first. NASA doesn’t bring… Read more »