Comment by b00ty4breakfast
6 hours ago
it's amazing, but I'll refer you to Gil Scott-Heron for my feelings on the matter
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
No hot water, no toilets, no lights
But whitey's on the moon
I wonder why he's upping me?
Cause whitey's on the moon?
Well I was already giving him fifty a week
With whitey on the moon
Taxes taking my whole damn check
Junkies making me a nervous wreck
The price of food is going up
And as if all that shit wasn't enough:
A rat done bit my sister Nell
With whitey on the moon
Her face and arm began to swell
And whitey's on the moon
Was all that money I made last year
For whitey on the moon?
How come I ain't got no money here?
Hmm! Whitey's on the moon
Y'know I just 'bout had my fill
Of whitey on the moon
I think I'll send these doctor bills
Airmail special
To whitey on the moon
I just came across this poem a few days ago and had the opportunity to think about it.
It’s a valuable perspective to hear. As someone prone to getting caught up in the breathless excitement about science, progress, human achievement, etc., it is a hard truth that these things are abstract and not relevant for people who are struggling with day-to-day life, particularly when those struggles are a result of the same government that is executing this mission.
However, the older I get, the less I bind to the idea of a single, correct truth. This perspective doesn’t invalidate the perspective that the mission is valuable. The complexity of the system in which this is taking place means that these things (moon missions and affordable healthcare) aren’t fungible for one another; his poverty wasn’t the result of the moon mission, it was the result of EVERYTHING that had happened over the 100 years prior.
So it’s useful to hear. It’s a sharp, valid reality check for those of us who like to think in big, abstract concepts. And, it’s one perspective among myriad valid perspectives.
Kind of a false dichotomy. How about medical care as a right for a big abstract concept? He's not anti-science here, he's against the inequality of its distribution.
> Kind of a false dichotomy.
That’s precisely my point. Some stanzas in the poem suggest that there’s a direct connection between the moon mission and his poverty.
> The man just upped my rent last night > cause Whitey’s on the moon
> Was all that money I made last year > For Whitey on the moon?
And my point then was that I can see and empathize with his frustration, but I don’t feel it’s a singularly correct perspective to the exclusion of the perspective that the missions were of great value.
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I don't think it's actually a useful perspective at all. The poem is racial resentment repackaged as a means to guilt trip people into feeling bad about adventure, science, and exploration. Unless they were pretty well read at a young age, most millennials probably first experienced this poem in the film First Man, where it is read as a backdrop to Apollo 11 traveling to the moon. It's a great scene because the juxtaposition is stark. We can either hold ourselves back an an endless and futile journey on solving the human condition of poverty and inequality, or we can explore the stars. It's an easy choice.
> We can either hold ourselves back an an endless and futile journey on solving the human condition of poverty and inequality, or we can explore the stars. It's an easy choice.
Wait... Are you suggesting that "exploring the stars" is less of an endless and futile journey than dealing with poverty and inequality?
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Is it meant to guilt trip people? Or is it an honest expression of the frustration (and yes, racial resentment) that the author feels?
This is why I consider it a useful perspective to hear. I read this as a human being simply saying “this is how I feel in these circumstances”.
It’s uncomfortable, and I don’t believe that space exploration should be gated on solving poverty and inequality, but it is important to understand that an intelligent, thoughtful human being arrived at this place.
In a sense I feel that this is actually an appeal to the same sense of curiosity that drives space exploration. Why do we explore space? To learn and understand. Why should we consider human perspectives we don’t agree with? To learn and understand.
> an endless and futile journey on solving the human condition of poverty and inequality
It’s very telling that you think poverty can’t be solved.
—
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
No hot water, no toilets, no lights
But whitey's on the moon
I wonder why he's upping me?
Cause whitey's on the moon?
Well I was already giving him fifty a week
With whitey on the moon.
Rest in peace Gil-Scott Heron.
> We can either hold ourselves back an an endless and futile journey on solving the human condition of poverty and inequality, or we can explore the stars. It's an easy choice.
"Sorry, poor people; but I want to live on Jupiter so you're just gonna have to starve to death".
What a loser
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The author of this poem went to great lengths to show his racism. It reminds me of a post, probably on Reddit, of a similar racist nature. Just when it's going in the other direction it's clearer.
The post was by a man, supposedly white, who had to pull his child or children from private school because he could not pay for it. His frustration was based on the fact that his taxes were higher than the school tuition, and that another student at the school, a black student, was having his tuition paid by the government. He implied that he was paying for another person's education, and could not afford his own child's education. He saw the same dichotomy as that expressed in the poem, in the other direction.
He could be expressing the generational frustration of being black in America. When things are so segregated you feel you are looking across at a different country landing on the moon, you might write such a poem.
> He could be expressing the generational frustration of being black in America
I’m sure that’s how the racist young Republicans would defend themselves too. It’s hard being a young man in America today.
I get the general frustration there, but it's weird to focus on NASA's budget when it's such a teeny tiny fraction of the total.
Yes, there's a lot of government waste, but NASA ain't it.
And I would suggest that the billionaire class and unfettered capitalism are far more responsible for the modern day version of Scott-Heron's woes than the good ol' government scapegoat.
If DOGE served for anything at all it was for showing that there isn’t even that much “waste” per se. If there’s any waste it’s in the Pentagon which can’t even audit itself, but of course DOGE didn’t even get close to that. It was all performative for them.
I think they proved that the waste is not easily defined. I would call fraud, waste, but a computer program isn't likely to discover it without boots on the ground looking to see if the money is actually going where the records indicate.
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Interesting. For all of Gil Scott-Heron's brilliance, this is by far my least favorite work of his.
Great share, thank you!
It's fine to not be interested, but this time one of the astronauts is black
Yes, I remember that nihilistic piece of race rage bait and I remember it well. Now that 'non-whitey' is gliding past the moon and has shown he is past all that race-rage baiting by stating that [1] this is just — this is human history ... It’s the story of humanity — not black history, not women’s history I hope that the like of Scott-Heron and those who like to push this type of narrative are willing to finally take that hammer to ram down that nail into the coffin of the 'systemic racism narrative'.
No, I'm not holding my breath, the narrative if far too profitable for far too many people [2] to be put to rest.
[1] https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-black-astronaut-on-arte...
[2] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11151740-racism-is-not-dead...
Wanda Sykes is also famous for a pithier more recent take on it
Why are you so angry about a black person's perspective of what the moon landing meant to them? Rather than putting a nail in the coffin of the "systemic racism narrative", your post underlines how long we still have to go as a society to take black people's perspectives seriously, rather than simply denigrating them as "race bait."
Their HN profile is a bunch of complaints about being rate-limited for shitty takes. It's the norm.