One of my favorite movies is the 2012 biopic Lincoln, starring Daniel-Day Lewis and directed by Steven Spielberg. In it, President Abraham Lincoln struggles to procure votes from both sides of the political aisle in the House of Representatives, the result of which would pass the Thirteenth Amendment, thereby ending slavery in the United States. In one of the movie’s most pivotal scenes, the president is having a late night conversation with two young men working in the telegraph cipher office. The topic in question is of course, equality.

One of the young men mentions that he is an engineer,...