It’s way way way overstated generally and very very likely didn’t contribute at all to the DC crash, but to be fair the FAA’s hiring practices were objectively racist af. They filtered explicitly for people passing a “biographical test” that they sent the answers to black candidates to.
Discussion
For some of their roles, maybe.
I’d assume that’d apply less to engineers than other roles, and though. And then a lot of their engineers were contractors, which they generally just want the best in.
No, for air traffic controllers themselves. There’s several lawsuits over it, it was…. Really poorly done.
For NASA I haven’t seen any evidence of any real discrimination and I’d be surprised to learn any different than your claim.
To be clear, air traffic controllers were still properly qualified (they still had to go through the government ATC school), but the hiring practices to get there were incredibly racist. Sadly this also meant people who went to community colleges for ATC training got denied entry into the federal ATC school.