Transmissions from Pyraxis

I think I don’t truly enjoy Sci-fi sometimes because a lot of the time Black people aren’t there

bankuei:

hamburgerjack:

bankuei:

hamburgerjack:

And when I try to think about history

And patterns

And what can be, what could be

I know that things wouldn’t have changed enough for us to be there like we should be

I think apart of me likes Le Guin for the simple fact that PoC are there, as well as totally different species and places

And there’s all this diversity and acknowlegement of what’s wrong or that things are simply wrong

And that sometimes, but not all the time, no one gets away without comeupance

She is aware

No, she’s not a PoC herself

But she’s aware

And I’m reading works that are AWARE

DS9 was aware

Sisko was a captain, but he was very aware

All these years and centuries into the future of the totality of history, he wasn’t removed from it, he was apart of it

So many well done narratives in that show

As much as I love TNG and tolerated Voyager

There wasn’t… the ability to tell certain stories, I believe, from … the perspective… I needed

If only there had been a Black female Captain

If only

The universe would destroy itself

It is depressing because they tell us that we cannot even have the future

We can be no one, we can be no where

We can’t even have the future

I have seen anime where they can conceive that the world has been ridiculously reduced to nothing but the most basic of populations

And that some how

there are Natives who have survived

Millions of Asian people, of course, have survived

And of course, the White people have survived

But not a single Black person

Anywhere

And it’s really just hilarious because we’re the ultimate survivors if you just wanna get real

the Natives and the Black folks, oh, we gon be here, believe that

But in the visions of the future, we are not there

Not for them, not for anyone

Where is my badly written Black dystopian Fantasy where Whites are endangered and they must be kept in climate controlled, domed environments, not only to “protect” them, but to protect everyone from them

As it has finally been acknowledged that Whiteness is and was a virus upon the earth

Let’s throw in a scientist who is too curious and wishes to go “inside” to examine White Culture and history and falls in love with them

Perhaps she joins a movement to FREE WHITEY

But in the end, she’s blinded to the danger of these beings and is “eaten alive” by them

She is condemned, tainted, to live the rest of her days in one of their entertainment halls

Acting out their mythological theater where she must be Mammy and Sapphire and Jezebel

God, it would be a horrible story

But then in the next book maybe a former colleague or some other people decide they’re going to rescue her and any other tainted people from the Whiteness Domes

And we’ll see how that goes down and whether or not they can survive re-assimilation or if they’ll infect everyone around them

Maybe they’ll have to be killed

Maybe they will be killed

Because the threat of Whiteness is so great, it cannot be allowed to survive except among its original progenitors 

Perhaps among the Whites they would put up for observation or a chance to get into the larger world “One Who Understands”

a Liberal

It’ll be a title

Perhaps once a year, they announce a Liberal

Who will have a chance to go into the larger world and “redeem” White people

But they’ll always fail or something

It can be some red haired chick named Shepard-chan

I don’t fucking know

OKAY CAT, I GET IT

YOU CAN’T REACH THE SUN BEAM

SHUT UP

I’M TRYING TO HAVE THINKY TIME

It really says everything that they fantasize and have escapism where a key point is the lack of Black and brown people.

I wonder both about the setting in the fiction, where they’ve completed their genocide and eugenics and who are these people, murderers traveling the galaxy.

And about the creators who made this future who, having no real restrictions in the realm of the imagination, decided that either the future of an advanced society means the end of darker POC or, if dystopian, that the worst future is when some white people are ALSO treated poorly.

I mean, I don’t really wonder, because it’s all too obvious.

But it’s there.

It horrifies me to realize that given the unlimited potential of imagination, the perpetuation, glorification sometimes, of the murder/genocide of PoC, the erasure of their existence is what… they do

This is their imagination at it’s best?

You can see in their visions for the future a perpetuation of the thoughts they have now, there’s no change.

The fact that there is no change, even when you speak to an imagined future is just…

What do you do with that?

And when these things become massively popular and you see that others also enjoy this “no change” or accept the idea that the “worst” will be a world where Whites no longer have the power they used to

What can you do with that?

It hints to the idea that they do not want change and cannot accept it and that change is horror to them, unless it is a cleansing of all things they have been taught to fear, which in this case is brown and black PoC

We do not exist in their futures because they do not want us there even less so than in their present. And no do they want us in any fantastical visions of the past or straight fantasy.

It’s just… maddening, it’s madness. It is truly madness. Accepted and promoted.

What stands out to me is how much effort they put into working out the details of these new worlds- they imagine the effects of climate, technology, culture and really think hard about how all that fits together.

But, at the end of the day, it still comes down to white people at top.

Because it’s easier to imagine how society will change with post-human downloadable minds, the ability to completely restructure genetics, the idea of the ability to alter or create false memories, the ways in which multiple cultures from completely different alien sentient species interact, or how will AI think and operate…

…than it is for them to imagine that POC will have a foothold of equality in terms of ability and competence, or, even, be the majority WITHOUT making the core story about the oppressing of white people…

I mean, they’ll accept the idea of FTL travel and breaking basic laws of physics EVERYDAY but cannot imagine POC as people.

And fantasy is even more hilarious, because most of the time they base their fantasy settings off of historical cultures, and manage to ignore history’s advanced cultures (China, Egypt, Sumeria, India, Nubia, Mali, Aztec, Mayan, the Islamic diaspora) and focus in solely on… England?  While magically cutting out the whole parts about dumping bodies in bogs, or medical cannibalism, or dysentry from drinking shit water…

In a lot of ways, their fantasy is their way of making historical revisionism - which is why they constantly say stuff like, “There were no POC in Europe,it’s not realistic”or erase the massive role Islam played in Europe’s sciences and technology - supposedly they understand that fantasy is fiction, yet they’ve completely internalized the fantasy over the reality.

And we see the defensive pushback in the form of all the “alternate history” stuff, which… strangely enough looks just like how they used to write their history books before people started calling them on the reality of it.   Stories and media where colonialism is celebrated, it’s ok to denigrate the “natives” because in this fiction, they actually “are savage” and all that.

The need to constantly fantasize about a white world, where white people have made all the advances without any help, and conflict with the Other is either eliminated because the Other doesn’t exist or because the Other knows it’s place or the Other is actually a less-than-human orc/savage/beast…   this is the obsession they have.

The fact that they can’t accept their fellow human beings as anything other than Other, in 2012, says everything.

And this is why I say we end up fighting the logic of the 1800s.  They somehow figured out trepanation wasn’t actually releasing demons from their heads, but they can’t figure out we’re human and treat us as such.

And then they want to be the authorities on rationality and reason.

It is truly always the stories we tell that tell us who we truly are. Both as individuals, and as a society and civilization. There is so much truth in bankuei’s second post.

If you want to know a people, listen to the stories they tell.

But nevertheless, even though reading things like this I sometimes wonder, racism is NOT fundamentally biological. What has happened is that whiteness has become so intertwined with the psychology of Us and Them (which at its simplest level - “we’re alike and you’re different” - seems to be an element of base human nature) thatit is almost totally impossible to step outside of its perspectives - and for me, as a white member of one of the most privileged classes on the planet, may be impossible. At least, I hope to dead God that it isn’t - because I’ve already overcome so much of my former ignorance.

And one day, I hope to fight this in my own way. The numerous ideas I have in my head for a three-part Space Opera epic would include a genderqueer PoC as a prominent good character.

(via biyuti)