I knew a lot of black scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, and female mathematicians and engineers, women of all backgrounds. So this idea that anyone could be an engineer, a mathematician, or whatever, was something that I had grown up with and thought was really normal.

Margot Lee Shetterly

Categorized in : Thought Black Engineers Women

History happens as soon as I pick up my coffee cup - it happened 30 seconds ago. It's history.

Margot Lee Shetterly

happened coffee happens history

You can't change history. These things happened the way they did. What you can change is how you look at it and how you understand that it takes the good moments and it takes the difficult moments to move forward.

Margot Lee Shetterly

good you change history

During World War II, hundreds of thousands of people actually - and among them many African-American - migrated to the Hampton Roads area because of the job boom that was happening. It was a place where you could get stable war jobs.

Margot Lee Shetterly

roads you war people

Every time you go to an airport and get on a plane, you are basically taking advantage of the work that was done at Langley. Between World War I and World War II, they did just tremendous amount of fundamental research into basically making airplanes safer, making them more stable.

Margot Lee Shetterly

you work time war

For too long, history has imposed a binary condition on its black citizens: either nameless or renowned, menial or exceptional, passive recipients of the forces of history or superheroes who acquire mythic status not just because of their deeds but because of their scarcity.

Margot Lee Shetterly

just-because black long history

Our next-door neighbour taught physics at Hampton University. Our church abounded with mathematicians. Supersonics experts held leadership positions in my mother's sorority, and electrical engineers sat on the board of my parents' college alumni associations.

Margot Lee Shetterly

parents church leadership mother

We want the big stories, of course, of the great men, but there's as much drama and interest and lessons to be learned in actions that people like us take on a daily basis.

Margot Lee Shetterly

daily great men people

The black experience isn't exclusively slavery/civil rights/Obama.

Margot Lee Shetterly

experience black

How do we fill the need for technology workers, people who have computer skills and math and science skills? How do we get a more diverse science workforce? These are all issues - I would look at these documents that were from the '50s and '60s and '70s, and you'd swear they were written two weeks ago because the issues are the same.

Margot Lee Shetterly

you technology science people

My dad worked at NASA his whole career; he's a research scientist.

Margot Lee Shetterly

nasa career dad research

I feel like, in a lot of ways, 'Hidden Figures' is the book that I wrote and have been waiting to read since I learned to read.

Margot Lee Shetterly

hidden feel waiting book

A lot of times, when you have a story of minorities in America, it's always this super, oppositional thing. It's segregation, it's the racism, and those are the hard facts of the story.

Margot Lee Shetterly

story you racism facts

As much as I think it is necessary and desirable for white people to have an expanded view of the black American experience, it's probably even more important for black people to have that expanded view.

Margot Lee Shetterly

experience black white people

That's what 'Star Trek' was: We don't know how to make an ideal society, but we're going to portray that, and then we're going to work backward. I think that's why science fiction - despite the dystopian parts - comes out of this super ideal that, eventually, we will get to some better place where we actually live up to our ideals.

Margot Lee Shetterly

better society work science

Without imagination, I don't think there's any progress.

Margot Lee Shetterly

without think progress imagination

Katherine Johnson actually integrated the public university in West Virginia. And Mary Jackson had to petition state courts to be allowed to attend an all-white college to get the qualifications needed to become an engineer. At every turn, these women were involved in the Second World War, the Cold War, the civil rights movement.

Margot Lee Shetterly

women college war world

You don't get the good without the bad, but you really do have to see it all in order to make progress.

Margot Lee Shetterly

bad good you progress

You need to decide that you're going to use a story to enlighten and inspire people in the modern day.

Margot Lee Shetterly

story day you people

The Russians had got a real head-start into space; America was playing catch-up.

Margot Lee Shetterly

playing space real america

A lot of times, we talk about black people as if being black is all they are. They get up, go to work... and are as complex and interesting and variable as any other group of people. We don't often capture that or write about it.

Margot Lee Shetterly

group black work people