This was originally posted on blogger. Maybe you’ve heard this poem before: Whitey On the Moon.

Gil Scott-Heron released this in 1970, the year after the US Apollo mission had landed on the moon. The excitement back then must have been palpable. For all of human history, the moon was just a distant orb in the night-sky. Now, it could be explored – and Americans were doing it.

Mr. Scott-Heron offers a different take. It’s not him on the moon, after all – it’s Whitey. Whitey on the Moon won’t help Gil pay rent, won’t help his doctor bill, won’t help costly food. And what would Gil say today? Well no matter who’s off to space, it won’t help black folk with bullets in their face.

The premise of the space mission is that we’re all in it together. The creators of Stark Trek dreamed of exploring “Space: the final frontier”. They dreamed of a prosperous, post-racial world where technology has pushed us – all of us – past boundaries we never have dared to break. Elon Musk says that space travel is “about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past.” He hopes we can forgo our tumultuous history on earth and soar into the beyond.

But, I’m not sure that’s really possible these days, or that it ever was. For all the talk about post-racial unity, why did NASA tote anti-black policies until 1971? Why did women’s work go uncredited even though it was fundamental to the Space Race? In 1969, the space mission was government-funded but still science for the elite.

Last Saturday, SpaceX launched two astronauts to the International Space Station. According to them, the “Commercial Crew Program is a turning point for America’s future in space exploration that lays the groundwork for future missions to the Moon, Mars, and Beyond.”

Was the SpaceX launch cool? I admit yes.

But has it unified the country? Does it signify a post-racial American utopia? Hell no. Elon has divided us further – his launch has set our sights to the beyond when what we need more than anything is to look deeper at home. This is no public enterprise but the fantasy of a sole billionaire, a result of extreme inequality (of course our fascist President would endorse it).

It’s interesting to compare space exploration to the Age of Exploration. This time is remembered fondly in our textbooks. New countries being “discovered”, trade routes and cross-culturalism abound. But this viewpoint conveniently ignores the genocide of Native Americans, the cruel and hegemonic British Empire, and the mass spreading of disease.

Now, developing countries fighting Coronavirus, people are raising their voices against police brutality, and, well – Whitey’s off to space.

1 comments captured from original post on Blogger

**Unknown said on 2020-06-06** Beautiful dissection of the meaning of space exploration. Your post made me realize that buried underneath all this talk of finding a new place for humans elsewhere in the universe is the question: “Well, who gets to go?” Just as the extreme circumstances of superhero stories are meant to illuminate the fundamentals of human heart and courage, it seems fitting that exploring the outside, outer space, should prompt us to re-examine the issues that internally plague our societies.