Scifi as a white supremacist fantasy

April 20, 2014

All white casts in science fiction are often decried for a lack of inclusiveness, the negative effects of which reverberate throughout society etc. Yet, the problems that remain truly harmful are the white supremacist undertones that arise in a bleached vision of a better, wiser version of our species. Whitewashing in science fiction is the realization of Manifest Destiny, the ascension of the white man to the stars and abandonment of the savages. It is the only thing sweeter than unopposed colonialism.
Our parents have always joked about the moon landing, saying that it was always the white man’s intent to leave us down here, on a dying Earth. But it is an incredibly potent fantasy, the painting of a universe in which the white man dwells, like Orion, in the heavens with the gods and we are nowhere to be found. It is essentially the ultimate form of gentrification and a psychological one when it is confined to books and media. When artists of color are only allowed stories that can only reconstruct and retell the social and economic detriments that befall their people, they are being excluded from the greater boundaries of our collective imagination which dictates the course of our evolution as a civilization.
Cultural aesthetics such as Afrofuturism have already taken the cue but it is important, as people of color, to construct and project our own identities beyond the confines of our known reality.

(via theweefreewomen)

3:12am | URL: https://tmblr.co/ZpyPTw1DYh5hx

(Notes: 573)