Whitey on the Moon -- Gil Scott-Heron, 1983, 2:06 -- https://youtu.be/otwkXZ0SmTs

A timeless classic from poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron, originally written in 1970. This is a version from the 1983 film Black Wax. I think this holds up to a modern audience where we currently talk about sending people to Mars and beyond, all while we continue to look away from the social problems faced by minority populations. #BlackLivesMatter

From Alexis C. Madrigal writing for The Atlantic: "Whitey on the Moon," changed the way I thought about the space race forever. It anchored the flight into the heavens, tethering it to the persistence of racial inequality, and pulling it out of the abstract, universal realm in which we like to place our technical achievements. Though I still think the hunger for the technological sublime crosses racial boundaries, it destabilized the ease with which people could use "our" in that kind of sentence. To which America went the glory of the moon landing? And what did it cost our nation to put whitey on the moon?

Here is another version of the poem: https://youtu.be/PtBy_ppG4hY