That's because the majority of scientific achievements to date, have been by white men. I'm not celebrating that fact, I'm just pointing out the source of the statistic you've pointed out. The things weren't named because the person was a white male, they were named because of a tremendous achievement that happened to be made by a white male. When the majority of engineers are white men, that's when you get that trend. As we see more black men/women achieve great things, we will see more things named after them.
Unfortunately, the rate of scientific and natural discovery in my opinion is slowing down. There will never be a black Christopher Columbus because there are no continents left to discover. There won't be a black Thomas Edison, because we already have light globes. Going out of our way to inflate other achievements just for the sake of naming buildings after minorities is a ridiculous thing to do.
Yes, this is a throwaway. Yes, I shouldn't do it. But frankly, it's the only way I would ever comment on something like this. Everyone involved in American culture war subjects is too toxic. Too many norms of debate about almost every topic are toxic. It'll be the end of your country if this continues.
Would you like to give an example to back up your claim though? There is no statue in the US celebrating somebody for discovering the number zero, or gunpowder, or paper, or anything else I can think of that was brought over to the West.
If you're saying we should never celebrate anybody that builds on the achievements of others, well then we shouldn't celebrate anything in science at all. All discovery and progress builds on the work of those that came before us.
Also I get your point that at NASA and in the USA we have mostly white scientist until recently, but I take issue with your statement about the majority of scientific achievements.
Historically there are thousands upon thousands of Arab and Chinese scientific achievements, to name a few cultures that aren't white. I don't think that is what you meant though.
That's because everyone else was excluded. To overcome this pervasive and hostile environment takes exceptional ability.
Stop trying to prevent black people from receiving praise.
> If their achievements were that incredible, we would've heard much more about them. Plenty of white engineers had successful careers, contributed to their program, performed well, but will forever go un-named
This isn't remotely true. The majority of things are named after white men to the exclusion of everyone else.