California’s Victor Glover: A patriot who puts space over race

Captain Victor Glover — born, raised, and educated in California — made history this year as the first black person to orbit the Moon, when he led NASA’s Artemis II mission. But that’s not how he sees his achievement.

At a May 1 CBS town hall event with the four astronauts of the Artemis II crew, 11-year-old Ameya asked Captain Glover: “How did it feel to be the first person of color to fly around the moon?”

“Good question,” a host was heard saying.

Glover, who had just piloted the billion-dollar Orion capsule to the Moon and back, seemed a little piqued by the question.

“You know, Ameya. Thank you for the question,” he acknowledged.

Then, as if drawing inspiration from his view of earthrise in lunar transit, Capt. Glover supplied one of the greatest lessons on teamwork, selflessness, and patriotism that Americans have seen in a generation.

“One of the things about swinging for the fences and trying to hit a home run when the game is on the line, is if you think about that,” gesturing at himself, “that can add pressure and make you not go up there and play your best game.

“So, I focused a lot on working with this team and trying to be a good teammate…. I think one of the reasons we were as successful as we were, is that we spent a lot of time thinking about us, not me individually.”

For the visual coda, Glover then pointed to the Velcro-backed decorations on his flight suit. 

“I spent a lot of time thinking about this patch,” touching his NASA insignia, “and this patch,” his right hand fixing on the American flag. 

“… Not this patch,” he concluded, pointing to his name tag.

Glover’s response was an exquisite embrace of the post-civil rights consensus, a norm that governed the American spirit from the mid-1960s until its recent, unceremonious displacement.

For the better part of five decades, we moved fitfully, but with clear intent, toward a state of social grace where a pilot’s ancestry was as relevant to his mission as his (or her) shoe size.

Progress was measured by the degree to which an individual could be seen as an individual, judged by the content of his or her character rather than the demographic circumstances of his or her birth.

No child can be faulted for the preoccupations of her era. In another time, Ameya might have asked the astronauts about the roar of the engines or the blackness of the void. That her question invoked the color of Capt. Glover’s skin reflects an education seasoned with the noxious flavors of race essentialism — the belief that race is not superficial, but a fixed core that precedes the individual.

For years, entire institutions have worked with frantic industry to reinstall race as the primary lens through which human achievement must be viewed.

Where race has been provided as the first and most important tool for understanding the world, too many young people have been trained to see the category before the citizen.

Glover’s gentle redirect was an act of profound kindness and public service. By defending himself (and all of us) from demographic reduction, he invited us out of the cramped quarters of constructed racial categories, into the frontiers of shared human endeavor.

By emphasizing the mission patches over his own name tag, he did not tell Ameya that her identity was unimportant. He showed her that her light needn’t be confined to narrow hallways — that her gifts should redound to human history.

Capt. Glover, bless him, reminded us all that the old-fashioned civil rights ethos, which rejects essentialism, prizes universalism, and honors the individual, remains the most effective way to organize a society. 

It is the only path to the stars that keeps our feet planted firmly on common ground.

Adam K. Thompson writes for the Prohuman Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to common humanity and character-based education.