INGERSOLL: Historic First Blacks Had Quite A Week. Let’s Hope Astronaut Hero Put End To It After Reporter’s Question

Left: (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) Right: (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP via Getty Images)

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Greetings, Dear Reader,

We’re going to dedicate Tuesday to my favorite subject.

HISTORIC FIRST BLACKS

It would have been a good week for historic first blacks, if they’d have just let Victor Glover do the talking.

Glover just piloted the first orbit of the Moon for NASA since 1953. It’s an incredible achievement … with an asterisk: Glover is black. He also had with him a Canadian and a woman, two other firsts for NASA, but Glover’s blackness is unignorable in an ignorant press.

A young girl asked him recently during a press conference, “How does it feel to be the first person of color to fly around the Moon?”

You can forgive the young lass. She’s innocent. Adults almost certainly polluted her. It’s a waste of a question. How does it feel? I would imagine almost exactly like it feels for a white man. So mind-bogglingly, butt-clenchingly terrifying that only a special breed of human being can stomach it. Neil Armstrong. Alan Shepherd. Buzz Aldrin. Victor Glover. I’d guess they all felt nearly identical levels of suppressed panic.

“Amaya, thank you for the question,” Glover began. “I will tell you one of the things about swinging for the fence and hitting a home run when the game is on the line, if you think about that, that can add pressure and make you not go up there and play your best game.

I focused a lot on working with this team and trying to be a good teammate, be a good teammate to them and receive from them their good teamwork. And I think one of the reasons we were successful is we spent a lot of time thinking about us and not me individually.

So if I could give a good visual, I would say I spent a lot of time thinking about this patch,” he gestured to the NASA patch, “and this patch,” then to the American flag, “and not this patch,” he finally gestured to his nametag.

I salute you, Victor, you are a class act and an example for all Americans. It was the first time he addressed race directly since April 3, almost exactly a month earlier. It would have been a high note for HFBs if not for one KBJ.

Historic First Black Woman SCOTUS Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asserted herself in a situation just days later that was itself historic on many levels. First, SCOTUS ruled April 29 in the........

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