Equity, Equality, and the U.S. Declaration of Independence

Section 1 of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, written by George Mason and adopted by the Fifth Virginia Convention on June 12, 1776, states “that all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

The Preamble to the U.S. Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson and adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, states that "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Jefferson never claimed originality for his Declaration, maintaining instead that it was merely a faithful rendition of the Colonial Zeitgeist and its interpretation of other sources such as Mason and Locke.  

Both Mason and Jefferson referred to all men as being either “by nature equally free and independent” or “created equal … [and] endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”  However, Mason’s five-fold reference to life, liberty, property, happiness, and safety was boiled down by Jefferson into a three-fold reference to life, liberty, and happiness; consistent with property being subsumed under liberty, and safety under happiness.  After all, Jefferson was an author who took scissors to the Bible in order to pare it down to what he considered its most essential features; and in his Declaration he made up for a truncation of the number of ideas with an enhanced capitalization of words.

For the Founders, being by nature equally free and independent - - or being created equal with inalienable rights - - included being free of arbitrary legislative procedures like taxation without representation or bills of attainder.  Being Englishmen, they insisted on equal status before the law, which is to say, an equality of procedure or opportunity to receive a fair hearing in a stable legal environment. 

In contrast, the legal notion of equity has had a long and checkered career as the antithesis to equality and as a parasite on lawful procedures.  Beginning with the English Court of Chancery in the Middle Ages, there occurred the idea that the King’s Law (or “Conscience”) could trump local courts of law.  This might have been acceptable if it had been limited to technical issues such as in the following cases: Creditors appeal to a bankruptcy court as a court of equity.  A second example pertains to an equal-stock company in which one member did most of the work, incurred an unusual debt, and requested a larger-than-equal pay-out from the enterprise.  

The idea of equity as the King’s Conscience always had the potential to degenerate into an enforcement of “whatever the judge says,” while ignoring the actual law.  Nevertheless, there evolved a dual track system consisting of courts of law, which adjudicated legislative statutes; and of courts of equity, which adjudicated “fairness” - - or whatever the judge thought was fair.  (Later, the judgment might become whatever John Rawls thought was fair.)  Hence, the notion of a court of equity, dating back many centuries, entailed creating a parallel court system, generating complexity and obfuscation, circumventing law (especially property rights), and distributing economic goods in accordance with the preferences of powerful elites.

One notes in passing that the term, equity, has a different meaning in business contexts, viz., the ownership of assets that have labilities attached to them (the securities traded in the stock market).  One is owed some fluctuating amount of cash by virtue of owning such securities, provided that someone wants to make a market in those securities.  Hence, equity markets are somewhat reminiscent of equity courts in awarding some value that is due: Equity values in the stock market are objective in the sense of being the highest bids, whereas equity values determined by a court of equity are essentially subjective.

The meaning of equity most in vogue today is the distribution of economic goods in accordance with the racial preferences of intellectual elites.  Christopher Caldwell, writing in the May 17, 2021 National Review, mentions three female mayors who were recently recognized for administrative acumen by the MIT business school.  These mayors were praised as purveyors of equity, despite presiding over cities with appalling homicide rates and other social pathologies.  Caldwell finds that the perceived paramount importance of equity derives from an assumed absolute (categorical) imperative to eliminate all collective racial inequalities, to abandon equality of opportunity, and to adopt equality of result.  Although Caldwell does not so conclude, it would seem that enforcing collective racial equality over time would require all racial groups to experience alternating eras of subjection and preference that would “average out” in the long run.

In today’s conception of equity as delineated by Caldwell, first, all inequality across identifiable groups is proof of white racism.  Second, equity is race-conscious rather than race-blind.  Third, civil-rights law overrides the U.S. Constitution.  Caldwell does not state the seemingly obvious rejoinder that “the new anti-racism is the old racism.”  Indeed, some white Wisconsin farmers recently won a court case in which they objected to agricultural debt relief being parceled out on a racial basis.  The judge in that case made two points: The obvious solution to old racism is to disallow any new racism, not to embrace even more racism.  Furthermore, “the Biden administration is radically undermining bedrock principles of equality under the law.”  In other words, equity, as construed by the Biden administration in this case, violates equality.

Caldwell maintains that the Biden administration is now radically redefining the American idea of fairness.  Equity and fairness are said to derive from so-called critical race theory, but as we have noted above, this is not true.  Courts of equity have been around since King Henry III in England; but critical race theory has only been around since 1989, when Marxists - - thwarted by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of international socialism - - substituted “race struggle” for “class struggle” and continued their long march through the institutions.  From another perspective, Caldwell notes that contemporary critical race theorists, having found that equity as “race-blindness” is not achieving their desired results, now propose that equity as “race-consciousness” is the sine qua non for the formation of social policy.

Many people may assume, Caldwell writes, that the Civil Rights Act still functions in order to fight discrimination; whereas what passes for civil rights today has moved on to equity ideology, especially among large corporations.  There is much money to be made in giving corporate seminars like “A Ten-Step Plan to Embed Race Equity in Your Organization.”  Any employee dissenters from equity theory are likely to be treated as deviants from a Maoist self-criticism session.  

“The most troubling innovation of equity is its tendency to move in a direction that will, in time, reintroduce segregationist thinking,” as when Illinois U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth announced that she will vote to block the confirmation of all white nominees brought before the Senate.  Caldwell concludes that “perhaps equity is best thought of as diversity or affirmative action taken to its logical conclusion.”

“Equality Acts” from Easter to Pentecost and Beyond

Reflections on the occasion of Pentecost: A bill named “The Equality Act” has been debated in the U.S. Congress in recent years and recommended for passage by President Biden in a recent speech to a joint session of Congress.  Whether one believes that the main result of this “Equality Act” would be exciting athletic competition between biological women and transgender women; or, on the other hand, the exclusion from competition of whole groups of would-be athletes with lesser average muscle mass; one might at least agree that the term “Equality” in this bill’s name has been minted only very recently.  In contrast, if one were to seek the counsel of millennia of experience, one would find, for example, that men and women played equally dignified roles in the Biblical accounts of Easter and Pentecost: Women went to Jesus’ tomb to anoint his body on Easter morning; joined the apostles for prayer in the upper room; were among the group of believers who were filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost; and heard Peter’s first sermon quoting the prophet Joel, saying “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.”  

Some commentators raise the question, however, whether the Biblical accounts are mythical.  In response to this question, Robert Barron has recently cited C. S. Lewis in saying that “those who think that the New Testament is a myth just haven’t read many myths.”  Barron notes that myths are “once upon a time” stories with their own takes on eternal truths, but without any specific location in historical eras.  No one ever supposed that Heracles performed his labors during a specific historical time period.  In contrast, Barron notes, Biblical accounts in the New Testament are very specific in their historical references. 

The Biblical “everyone who calls” refers not only to birth gender, but also to race.  (Perhaps one should say “birth race,” for who would be so foolish as to doubt that a lucrative pigmentation technology could arise for altering skin color?)  Martin Luther King, Jr. famously looked forward to the day when everyone would be judged by the content of his character, not by the color of his skin.

In the opinion of Jason L. Riley, the day foreseen by Dr. King has already arrived: Race relations in America are better than ever.  Dr. King’s concept of equality is being achieved.  This improvement has occurred despite various well-publicized ideological agendas promoting theories of “systemic racism” and “unconscious bias” that swamp out good news.  For example, the approval of interracial marriage rose from 4% in 1958 to 84% in 2013.  Riley writes that “the political left has a stake in overstating both the existence and effects of racism so that it can advocate for more and bigger programs to combat it.”  

One such leftist group is named “Black Lives Matter” (BLM).  According to the New York Post article “Inside BLM co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors’ million-dollar real estate buying binge” (April 10, 2021), a NYC version of BLM has called for a financial probe into the operations of the global version of BLM.  Cullors is a self-described Marxist whose standard of living seems greatly to surpass those of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, or Mao; and flagrantly to violate the spirit of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”  Presumably, this Marxist slogan has also undergone some recent linguistic engineering, but it is difficult to see just how the enjoyment of luxury housing in Topanga Canyon or the Bahamas can be construed as an “act of equality.”

The Twelfth Man - - in Wisconsin?

Regarding the United States Presidential Election of 2020, consider the state of Wisconsin and assume that the ballot count reported to Congress by the usual state electoral machinery was a perfect numerical statement of all legal ballots, and only legal ballots, that were cast.  As of December 27, 2020, a reasonably reliable Internet website reported those results as 1,630,866 for Biden and 1,610,184 for Trump.  For the purposes of the present analysis, we will neglect the Libertarian and other candidates and will assume that the total number of ballots cast was 3,241,050.  Biden won by 20,682 votes (0.638%).  

It is desired to develop a theoretical model of how the Wisconsin results might have come about.  Suppose that prior to the election, the participating 3,241,050 Wisconsinites, being incredibly civic-minded, had decided to divide themselves into discussion groups of 12 voters each for political discussion and debate before casting their ballots.  There would have been 270,087 discussion groups, with 6 hapless Wisconsinites left group-less, assumed to have split evenly between the two candidates, and excluded from further analysis. 

If all 270,087 discussion groups had split their votes evenly, then the two candidates would have tied at 1,620,522 each in Wisconsin - - and you thought that the actual voting controversies were a headache!  But not to worry, 10,341 Wisconsinites “flipped their votes” in order to give Biden his 20,682-vote margin.  We assume that exactly one vote was flipped in each of 10,341 discussion groups (i.e., that 3.8% of all discussion groups broke for Biden by 7 to 5), while the remaining 270,087 – 10,341 = 259,746 discussion groups (96.2%) were dead even (6 Biden votes to 6 Trump votes).

Prior to the election, a widely acclaimed, professional, scientific poll gave Biden a projected 17% margin of victory - - and who are we to suggest any analysis that does not “follow the science”?  (See the footnote at the end of this blog post.  There were other polls; but the ABC / Washington Post poll will be used here in order to make a clean distinction.)  The 17% projected Biden victory would be consistent with all 270,087 discussion groups breaking 7 to 5 for Biden (58.3% to 41.7%, i.e., a 16.6% net preference for Biden).  In contrast, the 0.6% actual Biden victory is consistent with nearly all (259,746, or 96.2%) of the discussion groups being dead even (6 to 6).  

Who was this “Twelfth Man,” the defector from the projected 7 – 5 Biden poll advantage to the actual 6 – 6 electoral result in 96.2% of the hypothesized discussion groups?  (We’re dealing here with Wisconsin, so we assume that this Twelfth Man is not a certain student-athlete at Texas A&M University!)  The Wisconsinite Twelfth Man stated to pollsters a preference for Biden, nevertheless supported Trump at the ballot box, and almost gave Trump the victory.  This Twelfth Man is proposed to be a Wisconsinite who, being badgered by acquaintances and public media to support a scientifically projected or socially acceptable winner, is inclined to tell a pollster one thing and then to vote differently.  This Twelfth Man hopes merely to show the pollster the door and to get about the rest of his life in peace.  If this analysis is right for Wisconsin and generalizable to the rest of the nation, then the U.S. electorate is portrayed as split into two nearly equal factions that seem to be largely beyond the reach of rational persuasion: One-twelfth of the electorate will not even answer pollsters accurately, presumably due to fear of some manner of reprisal. 

Of course, this analysis has assumed scientific and accurate polling and voting procedures, and has focused on the hypothesized badgered voters who will not publicly state what they think or intend.  What would the analysis look like if, heaven forfend, the 17% projected Biden advantage had been a fiction publicized precisely in order to badger voters into flipping their votes or in order to suppress their turn-out?  We will not pursue that line of inquiry here.

The Twelfth Man analyzed here would seem to be a modern-day version of Solzhenitsyn’s Colonel Georgi Vorotyntsev.  (See the October 13, 2020 blog post in this series.)  When Vorotyntsev ventured the slightest deviation from the Kadet party line (that of the intelligentsia), the drawing room fell eerily silent.  As if hypnotized, Vorotyntsev said no more, “not because he felt he was wrong, but out of fear of saying something reactionary.”  Subsequently, he was privately advised that “in educated Russian society … by no means every view may be expressed … [and] the more ‘liberated’ the company, the more heavily this tacit prohibition weighs on it.”  Such ingrained self-censorship, or Vorotyntsev effect, severely limited public speech on important issues in late-Tsarist Russia.  Today, if a Twelfth Man would venture, during polite conversation, the slightest deviation from some aspect of, say, progressive identity politics, then the ensuing, eerie silence would quickly bid him to say no more, lest he say something reactionary.  Today, “in educated American society … by no means every view may be expressed … [and] the more ‘progressive’ the company, the more heavily this tacit prohibition weighs on it.”  The modern-day Vorotyntsev effect continues to limit and to distort public speech on important political issues, including those expressed in Presidential polling and voting. 

(Footnote: The October 28, 2020 ABC News / Washington Post Poll [rated A+ by those who supposedly know] gave Biden a 17% lead in Wisconsin.  See https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/wisconsin/, accessed 12-30-20.)

Elitism, Nihilism, and Vorotyntsev-ism in Politics

This year, more so than most, the elections for high office in the United States highlight Benjamin Franklin’s post-constitutional-convention remark that you, the citizens of the erstwhile colonies, now have “a Republic, if you can keep it.”  Among the types of radicalism that would fundamentally alter the United States Constitution is one that found historical expression in the intelligentsia of late 19th and early 20th century Russia, where intelligentsia is a term of social and political art discussed below.  Right now, three weeks before Election Day 2020, voters may wish to incorporate the following analysis into their electoral deliberations.

      The Northwestern professor, Gary Saul Morson, has vividly portrayed pre-revolutionary Russia while reviewing the background of the word intelligentsia, which was coined about the year 1860 in order to refer to an elite class based on three criteria.  First, each member of the intelligentsia, referred to as an intelligent, agreed to identify himself with this progressive class in preference to any traditionally defined social, professional, ethnic, or religious class.  Second, each intelligent devoted himself or herself to a rigorous personal regimen of “puritanical dissoluteness” or “nihilistic moralism,” ignoring its implied irony and inventing a meaning of life independent of tradition.  Third, each intelligent accepted a set of destructive beliefs - - be they populist, Marxist, or anarchist - - that were taken to be scientifically underwritten, absolutely certain, and completely obligatory; thereby “checking the boxes” for some fashionable modern ideas while remaining oblivious to their many implied contradictions of history or logic: An intelligent accepted atheism on faith, became spiritually devoted to materialism, and chose to embrace determinism.  An intelligent committed himself or herself to “science,” construed as a metaphysical system in which the world worked by purposeless forces that nevertheless aimed at utopia; and detected a profound syllogism in the statement “Man is descended from apes; therefore, love one another.”

      With regard to nihilism, one must be aware of possible equivocation: Philosophical nihilism is an extreme skepticism maintaining that nothing in the world has a real existence and that “All is unreality or illusion.”  On the other hand, historical nihilism can refer to the extreme Russian political viewpoint, dating from the late 19th century, that disapproved of the entire established social order and sought to overthrow it.  Destruction of existing society was regarded as the first step towards the utopia that would quickly arise were it not for the baleful effect of current social arrangements.

      Morson reports that between 1900 and 1917 in late-Tsarist, pre-revolutionary Russia there were tens of thousands of acts of terrorism, arson, robbery, and murder.  How did educated liberal Russian society, in thrall as it was to the intelligentsia, respond to this scourge?  A Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadet Party) was set up in the Duma (legislature formed in 1905), but official Kadet publications never condemned political assassination or terrorism.  In the words of one liberal, “Condemn terror?  That would be the moral death of the party!”  Solzhenitsyn’s novel November 1916 portrays a gathering of Kadet liberals and the visiting Colonel Georgi Vorotyntsev.  When Vorotyntsev ventured the slightest deviation from the Kadet party line, the room fell eerily silent.  As if hypnotized, Vorotyntsev said no more, “not because he felt he was wrong, but out of fear of saying something reactionary.”  As a professor later explained to him, “In educated Russian society … by no means every view may be expressed … [and] the more ‘liberated’ the company, the more heavily this tacit prohibition weighs on it.”  Such ingrained self-censorship, or Vorotyntsev effect, severely limited public speech on important issues.

      Morson reveals the moral cowardice of pre-Revolutionary Russian liberals, who signed petitions they did not agree with; supported anarchists’ demands to abolish the police despite foreseeable, looming disaster; agreed that socialism would cure all societal ills with alacrity; and obeyed the maxim “Better to side with people a mile to one’s left than be associated with anyone one inch to one’s right.”

      Morson notes that the terror of the French Revolution was eventually stopped by the fall of Robespierre and the rise of Napoleon.  But in Russia, Stalin proclaimed an intensification of class struggle even after the Russian Revolution had ended, leading to innumerable executions and exiles to the Gulag, not to mention purges, show trials, and induced famine.  Giving in to illiberal forces ensures their longevity.

      Recently, more than a century after liberal opinion in late-Tsarist Russia fell over itself to support various socialist, Marxist, and anarchist initiatives, the Harvard professor Harvey C. Mansfield has well described the latest emanation of the Vorotyntsev effect in the United States: “We live in a society where racism is not, and cannot be, openly professed … [yet] ‘systemic racism’ supposedly persists … [in a] paradox of a racist society without racists.”  If a modern Vorotyntsev would venture, during polite conversation, the slightest deviation from the progressive view of “systemic racism,” then the ensuing, eerie silence would quickly bid him to say no more, lest he say something reactionary.  Adapting the Russian professor’s advice, “In educated American society … by no means every view may be expressed … [and] the more ‘progressive’ the company, the more heavily this tacit prohibition weighs on it.”

      Mansfield observes that systemic racism is taken to be unconscious, but that “it is strange to describe an unconscious effect as racism, for an ism is an opinion, a doctrine, not a mere condition.”  Systemic racism is said to be the bad result of behavior heretofore regarded as good, but now revealed to be illicit privilege rather than just reward.  On the other hand, why should anyone feel guilty about an accusation of “privilege” if a system beyond anyone’s intentions creates that privilege?  It seems that charges of “systemic racism” are meant as a way to avoid arguments over the nature and application of justice.  “More affirmative action and more subsidies - - what can they do that will now help instead of hurt?  Call them ‘reparations’ - - will that do any good?”  Mansfield concludes that “‘Systematic racism’ is a bogus description that issues in an accusation made in doubtful faith [and] that contradicts itself.”  Nevertheless, Mansfield finds that theories of “systematic racism” are so widely held as to require polite disputation.

      Combining the insights presented by Morson and Mansfield, one concludes that it is high time to uphold the original intentions of Colonel Georgi Vorotyntsev!

(Postscript #1: Exactly one week after the original Mansfield article, the WSJ published seven replies (“Replying to Mansfield on Systemic Racism”) expressing a spectrum of opinions that generally, but not always, agreed with Mansfield’s analysis.)

(Postscript #2: The next blog posting in this series is currently expected to appear on January 1 or February 1, 2021.)

Absolutism and Agitprop versus True Grit

Securely ensconced in his Alpine redoubt far removed from the recent rioting in the United States, the international college dean, Andrew A. Michta, has recently highlighted the political thought of the Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz.  (See the August 1-2, 2020 weekend print edition of the Wall Street Journal.)  Milosz, an anti-totalitarian and a future Nobel Prize winner, managed an escape from Poland during the Stalinist era; criticized Western intellectuals who saw communism as overcoming the “bourgeois forces” that had caused World War II; warned the West of the fate of the human mind and soul under totalitarianism; and published his book, The Captive Mind, in 1953.  In the Soviet type of absolutism, the main intellectual tool for reshaping individuals into “affirmative cogs” serving the state is the transformation of ordinary human language into ideologically sanctioned language.  Clear external referents are replaced by cloudy subjective preferences; formerly clear expressions may be forbidden at a moment’s notice; and no linguistic legerdemain is out of bounds while promoting the purposes of the political hegemon.

      It would be illustrative to specify a concrete example of such linguistic legerdemain in the United States today.  As background, recall that the acronym NAACP refers to a prestigious civil rights organization.  Now consider recent news reports regarding a radio announcer who, while congratulating an individual on nomination to candidacy for high federal office, referred to that individual as a “CP,” in the sense of the aforementioned acronym.  That radio announcer was promptly fired from his job.  So “CP” is fine for acronyms but not for individuals?  Who knew?  This linguistic convention, dating from some unknown time and promulgated by some unknown elitist authority, certainly chills free speech, detracts from ordinary civility, and increases the number of “Captive Minds.”

      Returning to Michta’s argument: If radicals can enforce the idea that race is the exclusive lens for viewing all U.S. history, then they may use that lens to identify and reward societal groups that are deemed meritorious.  This process may fairly be referred to as resegregation, because it is diametrically opposed to traditional civil rights.  Resegregation would demand massive re-education of the American public; inundating Marxist agitprop (a type of propaganda - see below); and, one surmises, the round-up of linguistic miscreants for Maoist-style self-criticism and confession.  One might have thought that current American elites would stand up for free speech; but, alas, these elites believe not that they have an obligation to serve the republic, but only that they have a right to rule it and to “cancel” all historical references that do not conform to today’s Zeitgeist.

      Michta contends that resegregation is fundamentally un-American; that focusing on individuals’ melanin content would lead to a caste system; that academic speech codes and safe spaces destroy democratic debate; that absolutism “cancels” political compromise; and that the current absolutism may be a harbinger of violence not seen since the Civil War.  The current ideological experiment in totalitarianism would have been seen by Milosz as the result of “an American mind bloated by a steady diet of identity politics and group grievance served up by ideologues in schools nationwide.”  On Friday, August 7, 2020 the WSJ published five letters to the editor regarding Michta’s article.  Four of the letters supported Michta’s viewpoint.

      Agitprop refers to the use of the arts, culture, and historical memory to promulgate the doctrines of ruling elites; if those elites are extreme-socialist or communist, then it may fairly be said that agitprop promotes Marxist doctrine.  (Soviet Russia had a Department of Agitation and Propaganda.)  Robert L. Woodson, Sr. has recently written about a taxpayer-funded museum display that meets the definition of agitprop (WSJ, 8/7/20).  In July, 2020 a branch of the Smithsonian Institution “posted a graphic on its website outlining the ‘Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness and White Culture in the United States’ … From the sounds of it, these ‘assumptions’ … would be debilitating and deleterious to minorities.”  As it turned out, however, those supposedly menacing “assumptions” were fairly anodyne aphorisms such as “hard work is the key to success.”  In fact, Woodson continues, “the qualities attributed to ‘whiteness’ are the same principles and values that have empowered blacks in America to succeed despite lingering discrimination and bigotry.  The museum removed the graphic after a public outcry, saying ‘it’s not working in the way that we intended.’”  This museum fiasco of July, 2020 was just one instance of “the demeaning and disabling message of racial grievance merchants, who claim that any and all failures of black Americans are attributable to so-called systemic racism.”  (Jackie Robinson overcame real systemic racism in order to join the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, some 73 years ago.)  Woodson’s article gives two stories of black resilience and success, as follows:

      During World War II, blacks were initially prohibited from becoming officers in the U.S. Navy.  Eleanor Roosevelt insisted that 16 college-educated black cadets be chosen for a line-officer training class in 1944.  “Someone in the Navy” tried to sabotage their training, but the cadets in this all-black class covered the windows of their barracks, stayed up all night to study, and passed with higher marks than an all-white class.  An incredulous chain of command forced the black cadets to re-take the exam, but they all passed again.  The Navy offered commissions to 13 of these cadets (the “Golden 13”), who became naval officers because of their “true grit.”  (A person is said to have “true grit” if he or she sets goals and follows through to achieve them with enthusiasm and perseverance in the face of significant obstacles; the idea being that tiny, hard particulate matter can eventually wear down whatever opposes it.)

      A second example of true grit is seen in the case of the best-selling book and award-winning movie Hidden Figures.  Three black female employees of a NASA research facility, Katherine Johnson (mathematics and computation), Mary Jackson (engineering), and Dorothy Vaughan (mathematical supervisor), played critical roles in John Glenn’s 1962 mission to orbit the earth.  Each of these employees overcame obstacles too numerous to recount in this review, but which are vividly portrayed in the excellent movie.  Hidden Figures, Woodson observes, “is but one of thousands of black American stories demonstrating that the most powerful antidote to disrespect isn’t protest but performance and [that] the most potent answer to repression is resilience.”