The Importance of Finding Your Own Confidence

The biggest thing that I took away from last night’s class was from the interview that we watched. Taraji P. Henson said, when she met Katherine Johnson, she told her that she didn’t focus on all the discrimination around her, she put her head down and did her work. Because Katherine Johnson didn’t have to look to the white men around her for validation, she made huge advances for NASA and the United States during the Cold War. If she had looked to others for validation she most likely wouldn’t have been able to do what she did because in 1960’s America, everyone was betting against her as an African American woman. I think that this lesson is really important for women and other people who are oppressed everywhere. While there shouldn’t be prejudices in the first place, I think the most effective way to change the opinions of the oppressors is to prove them wrong, which is exactly what Katherine, Mary and Dorothy did. It would have been impossible for them to prove their oppressors wrong had they not found validation and confidence within themselves, and I think that’s the most important lesson a young person can learn in trying to change the world.