Prof. Bell's Sci-Fi Story: "Space Traders"
"Space Traders" was just one of the jaw-dropping stories from [late black Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell's] best-selling collection, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. In it, aliens arrive on Earth promising vast riches and endless resources if America hands over all its black folks. The president and his cabinet debate the offer, including Gleason Golightly, a conservative black economics professor and unofficial adviser.Golightly tries to reason with his longtime conservative colleagues, but it's no use. A nationwide referendum is held, and guess what happens? Bell describes what happens to us [black folks] in the haunting conclusion to the story:
"In the night, the Space Traders had drawn their strange ships right up to the beaches and discharged their cargoes of gold, minerals and machinery, leaving vast, empty holds. Crowded on the beaches were the inductees, some twenty million silent black men, women and children, including babes in arms ... Heads bowed, arms now linked by slender chains, black people left the New World as their forbears had arrived".
----------------------------------------------------
The Sci Fi Movie "In Time"
In Time is a very good, thoughtful movie. Given all the thrust towards immortality via transhumanist technology, singularity, bio-engineering, genetic manipulation and cyborg creation the movie says a lot about what may be on the near future's agenda. The movie builds on the pasts sorry record of race, class and ethnic domination/segregation and drives that current reality into the future. Only the names and places have changed not the processes of division and the unequal and unfair distribution of pain and pleasure, social rewards and punishments. The current scientific and technological quest to become as God, the creator of life, may well first enter an In Time stage. Unless its overturned, our capitalist economic system will insure that the future division of humanity (as is the case now) will pit the small minority of the rich against the not rich. The idea that the "immortal" ones will feel something missing from their boring, slow paced lives and will want to reclaim "feelings" is a good movie plot but has made little sense in the past where the rich restrain their feelings and stay aloof from the multiple sufferings of the masses.
Mahdi ibn-Ziyad, 11.20. 2011 emailed take on the recently released sci-fi movie, In Time starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried
Letter to a Brother, re: Futurism in Black
My Brother I am immediately reminded that the struggle continues on in ways similar and different than what obtained years ago. Thanks to much of the research that has gone on in the last five decades, we are now aware of many of the revised chronicles of our shared African past in the Americas. About the coming years ahead we have not dwelled on as we have the past and present. The future seems so far away and beyond the time we have to study our present situation in order to overcome the inglorious episodes of our collective past in the West. Us old heads must not beat ourselves up thinking about the future too much for our time is past. Yet those coming behind us must have an informed ground on which to trod as they march forward ahead into the time beyond our personal limits.
I wanted to converse with you about a glaring deficiency I (and others like yourself ) have probably seen in national black consciousness. The problem generally relates to systematic thinking and formal activism on questions of futurism, or stated differently "what must be done by us to do to get our black folks in the far term future picture"?
(1) Your own work in the black sci-fi idiom, book producing venues and the work of many other writers, film makers, musicians and visionary artists is all part of what is lately being described as Afro-futurism. Those of you who are into cultural productions have fortunately and correctly taken the lead in raising the future oriented consciousness of a certain segment of our people. Creative and artistic work in bridging the increasingly narrow gap between book-film fantasy and utterly real black reality is commendable and deserves credit for its ability to teach and prepare certain segment, more bookish/literate and only nominally religious (if religious at all) of our people for long distant tomorrows. As others I admire the work of the imminent black philosopher, Dr. Cornel West, who has managed weld sci-fi, hip hop, ethics and religion into his cameo appearances on audio discs and in the Matrix series of movies.
(2) Another segment of our population which has consistently taken snap shots of the future and created powerful mental images of what the future could hold for blacks is the religious community. All manner of theological musings about the end of times, the apocalypse, the joys of heaven, paradise, new purified earths in place of a sickened earth, the punishments of hell, lakes of fire, angels, with or without wings carrying people on magic-miracle flights, devils urging otherwise good people to sin happily, the jinn-men-women looking creatures who are somewhat like the wizards/witches in their ability to do magic, the orishas and holy ancestors, the resurrections and cycle of reincarnations and such have been the mainstays of common black folk religious lore for some time.
Theologians, reverends/imams/rabbis/priest/miracle workers/healers and the other doctors of religion (whether credentialed or not) should be applauded for their ability to keep our folks attention on waiting for Judgment Day or waiting for the return of departed avatars, saviors or long dead imams. The religious waiting means devotees have to plan and arrange for the future even if the future is somewhat pre-determined On High. At least the idea of black futurism is concretized in the mental images of segments of the black church/mosque/temple going masses. If the religious waiting may seem in vain to outside observers and the planned for event does not happen at the appointed moment, cognitive dissonance sets in the mind set of convinced devotees who usually are able to rationalize why the event did not happen as predicted but still will happen in the future. Such may be called the "apocalypse now, later or whenever" syndrome.
Some on the religious front have also envisioned UFO's, aliens from far planets, cloning, space travel, genetic mutations and some such as part of their core theologies. As an example here I reference Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam (NOI) who, at a recent conclave of the NOI, demonstrated once again the religion's belief in UFO's:
Farrakhan's Mysterious Wheel Within a Wheel
During last year's Saviors' Day speech, Farrakhan for the first time in years discussed in detail a vision he had in Mexico in 1985 involving an object he calls "the wheel." Using charts, photos and drawings, he spent almost four hours describing how he was invited aboard and heard Elijah Muhammad (NOI founder and Messenger of Allah) speak to him. Farrakhan says that experience led him to inklings about future events. Farrakhan has said the wheel, with its great capacity for destruction, contains the "wisdom to purify the planet," but has harmed no one so far. He also claimed there have been governmental attempts to cover-up proof of the wheel, which he says many call UFOs. Nation of Islam leaders often quote Biblical references to the prophet Ezekiel -- along with Elijah Muhammad's teachings -- when it comes to the wheel. In his book of articles on the subject, Muhammad described a planet-sized manmade vessel that orbits earth and is purported to be loaded with 1,500 planes or wheels, words that have since been used interchangeably. Their purpose is unclear.
Some experts have made comparisons to the Biblical concept of Rapture, which teaches believers will be taken up to heaven, while everyone else will remain on earth for a period of torment, concluding with the end of time " by Sophia Tareen, 2.23.2011 Associated Press in Huff-Post Chicago
3) Seriously serious black business people, as capitalists, money managers and savvy investors, must keep themselves apprised of short term and long term market trends. Some of them who are in the advanced high tech arena certainly have knowledge of what's on the technological horizon say 10 to 20 years out. Some can even vision father out to say 50 years. This small segment who are technologically competent and hungry for profits are in a good position to help chart futurist discussions as they are now doing at the University of Texas at Austin.
Irradiation Creates Unnatural Chemicals in Food
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is ignoring growing evidence that a new class of chemicals (called cyclobutanones) form when food is irradiated and could be harmful. The chemicals, which have been detected in many irradiated foods licensed in the US, do not occur naturally anywhere on Earth. They have recently been found to cause genetic damage in rats, and genetic and cellular damage in human and rat cells.
Though federal regulations require the FDA to determine whether food additives proposed for human consumption are likely to cause cancer, birth defects or other health problems, the agency has not done so for cyclobutanones, nor have agency officials explained why they have failed to do so. Under US federal law, irradiation is considered a food additive.
(8825) Public Citizen & US Center for Food Safety
(4) Black medical science (the National Medical Association) vegans, herbalists, alternative health advocates and a slew of health industry workers (along with their labor organized unions) are another key segment along with black researchers in the hard sciences, mathematics (mostly continental Africans), engineering and the social sciences. The primary grades up through graduate and professional schools are places where dynamite new curriculums could be fashioned to teach all aspects of futurism, not merely the hard sciences that some historically black colleges have secured grants for extended research on various topics of concern to futurism. The thing is to stop any occurrence of the dreaded practice of scientific racism, especially the pseudo science of eugenics.
(5) Some black civil and human rights organizations are slowly beginning to incorporate environmental injustice into their lists of human values to be uplifted. They could just as well extend their concern into critiques of what racism and political dominance will look like in outer space prison colonies of the future or underwater places set aside for hated pariah people.
Or better yet what are the best set of ethics for Africana futurism? Should the black philosophers and lawyers, along with theologians begin the systematics of thinking through all kinds of scenarios and implications for moral-ethical conduct for black humans and black human clones and black human androids ... or whether or not blacks will exist at all?
(6) And what of the black nationalist and black patriotic activist community? What will black politics and states craft look like as we begin to populate new planets? Can we still dream of black separatism and the opportunity for a back to Africa movement via Mars or some other suitable planet. What is paradise for us? Are there any pictures of paradise based on a nationalist vision of the far future say 100 years out?
Given my musings above, I think that a national dialogue on black futurism is in order. A possible theme could be "Building Towards a Race First Future". I would hope we could design some kind of forum for late 2012 or 2013 that would at least:
I. Assemble in an initial forum (say 50 to 100) invited black nationalist, black radical left, environmentalists, lawyers and Afrocentricists (in ideology, in religion, in creative sci-fi writing, in music, in cultural and artistic pursuits), Pan-Africanist minded continental Africans and folks from the Caribbean and generally black activists form all the different areas I mentioned above.
I would want to restrict the initial forum to serious black cultural creative people, black political and religious nationalists, black business minded nationalists, hi-tech savvy visionaries who have a race consciousness, black women and gender activists and black radical left types because I think they could provide a strong ideological nucleus that other more integrationist and assimilationist type black folks could pick up on and later enlarge the consciousness of our whole community.
I would also try to hold a simultaneous forum among imprisoned black activists who may be able to offer critical insights and begin doing computer research on black futurism as it relates to issues of penology and post-modern forms of punishments.
But most importantly, the reason for a decidedly black nationalist twist to the initial forum (s) would the need to to thoroughly engage the standard rhetorical and ethical outlook of "white supremacist and often anti-human" goals and tone of much of the current scientific and high tech visions for the future. Nationalists, whether cultural, political or whatever, are those who I see as best placed to put the interests of black people and their future survival first and foremost.
As we enter the "Age of Transhumanism" and all the horrible implications this coming age can have for our people, it is important that we get into position the best folk to first deal with race.
II. The initial forum would be held in Philadelphia at some church, union hall, or community center.
III. We could use the deliberations and findings of the Philadelphia forum to build other regional forums around the country with the aim of holding a national conference in maybe 2014.
IV. I would envision organizing a permanent body, organized and funded with headquarters offices here in Philadelphia. That body could get standing as an NGO group attached to the United Nations.
V. A Canadian, Caribbean and continental African set of conferences could be part of the expansion from the early forums.
VI. We could develop and circulate for comment a statement of principles and a mission to guide our proceeding as say, "The Interim Consultative Group on Black World Futurism"
These are organizing ideas I wanted to share with you given your sterling work in the creative and political realms. Just wanted to get some feedback on the best ways to proceed.
Asante sana, salaams and hotep ...
