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==Analysis and reception==
"Whitey on the Moon" became popular among African-Americans in [[inner city]] neighborhoods in New York City, [[Detroit]], and [[Los Angeles]].<ref name="Maher 2017">{{cite book |last1=Maher |first1=Neil M. |title=Apollo in the Age of Aquarius |date=2007 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=9780674971998 |pages=28–30}}</ref> Although ''Small Talk at 125th and Lenox'', retrospectively described by [[AllMusic]] as a "volcanic upheaval of intellectualism and social critique", did not receive much mainstream recognition, it received considerable attention in Black and progressive circles across the US.<ref name="Baram 2014" /> Its criticism of the [[Space Race]] was broadly similar to that featured by the Black-owned print media, but drew far greater attention among that community.<ref name="Maher 2017"/> It featured thematic commonalities with [[Marvin Gaye]]'s 1971 song "[[Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)]]" and [[Faith Ringgold]]'s 1969 painting entitled "Flag for the Moon: Die
"Whitey on the Moon" is described as exemplifying [[Afrofuturism]], or "Black social thought concerning 'culture, technology, and things to come'."<ref name="Loyd 2015" /><ref name="Chaikin 2007">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Live from the moon: The societal impact of Apollo |encyclopedia=Societal Impact of Spaceflight |publisher=Government Printing Office |date=2007 |author-link=Andrew Chaikin |editor1-last=Dick |editor1-first=Steven J. |isbn=9780160867170 |last1=Chaikin |first1=Andrew}}</ref> The poem critiques the US space program by connecting its use of government funds to the marginalization of [[African Americans|Black Americans]],<ref name="Loyd 2015" /> identifying government neglect as the root cause of poverty and questioning the benefits and beneficiaries of the space program.<ref name="Rao 2018">{{cite news|title=Why 'First Man' prominently features Gil Scott-Heron's spoken-word poem 'Whitey on the Moon'|first=Sonia|last=Rao|newspaper=The Washington Post|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2018/10/13/why-first-man-prominently-features-gil-scott-herons-spoken-word-poem-whitey-moon/|date=October 13, 2018|accessdate=June 4, 2020|archive-date=November 1, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201101183501/https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2018/10/13/why-first-man-prominently-features-gil-scott-herons-spoken-word-poem-whitey-moon/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Regard 2015"/> The connection that Scott-Heron implies between [[capitalism]] and poverty, environmental destruction, and militarism, is a theme found in many of his other works.<ref name="Loyd 2015" /> During the 1970s, many Americans felt that the government was spending too much on the space program, including President [[Richard Nixon]];<ref name="Rao 2018" /><ref name="Crotts 2014">{{cite book|author=Arlin Crotts|title=The New Moon: Water, Exploration, and Future Habitation|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a0pCBAAAQBAJ|year=2014|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-76224-3|pages=71–72}}</ref> this criticism has been described as reaching its epitome in "Whitey on the Moon."<ref name="Regard 2015">{{cite book|author=Frédéric Regard|title=Arctic Exploration in the Nineteenth Century: Discovering the Northwest Passage|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tJVECgAAQBAJ|year=2015|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-317-32152-1|pages=11–12}}</ref>
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