"Whitey on the Moon" is a spoken word poem by Gil Scott-Heron, released as the ninth track on his debut album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox in 1970.

Accompanied by conga drums, Scott-Heron's narrative tells of medical debt and poverty experienced at the time of the Apollo Moon landings.

[2][3] His 1970 debut album, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, contained spoken word pieces that showcased his many literary and musical influences, including Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, and the Last Poets.

[5] Scott-Heron speaks the poem[6] alongside a bongo drum accompaniment of a sort common in street poetry, and used by contemporaneous artists such as The Last Poets.

[10] It featured thematic commonalities with Marvin Gaye's 1971 song "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)", and Faith Ringgold's 1969 painting titled "Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger".

[11] While Small Talk at 125th and Lenox did not chart, it earned enough attention for Flying Dutchman Records to authorize a second Scott-Heron album, Pieces of a Man in 1971.

[16][17] Writing for The Atlantic after Scott-Heron's death in 2011, Alexis Madrigal stated that "Whitey on the Moon" had taken spaceflight out of the "abstract, universal realm in which we like to place our technical achievements".

[5] Also writing in 2021, MSNBC columnist Talia Lavin stated that the poem "memorialized, in sardonic fashion, the saccharine patriotism that had arisen around Apollo 11".

[17] Also in 2021, a review of Scott-Heron's work commented: "Rarely has a point been made so forcefully while artfully avoiding the full brutal bludgeon of the nose.

[23] An opinion piece from MSNBC argued that the racial inequalities the poem highlighted remained in place, emphasized by the COVID-19 pandemic, which had had a particularly large impact upon people of color.