Racial Injustice in Science Fiction
By Aidan Anakin Stofka
"Further Considerations on Afrofuturism" verbalized much of what's been on my mind in regards to how our stories have reflected our societal disenchantment with futurism and optimism of the future. I have a moral struggle with science fiction lately because I grew up with sci-fi being my life, and it is still wildly a strong passion of mine, but I've grown to recognize the issues the article presents of how much of it is actually a plea to ignore the issues of the present and to have a pre-revisionist depiction of the future. It was so easy for me as a kid to celebrate real-life space flight missions and Walt Disney's hopeful visions of "Tomorrow," but now that I've grown up to see perpetual horrible racial inequality, economic inequality, and social indecency so rampant in our country, it's immensely harder for me to look up at the stars and fantasize about all the stories that could be told out there when its morally more responsible to tell important stories down here. However, continuing down this path concedes that science fiction is doomed to be science fantasy and a practical waste of time, and I refuse to believe that science fiction cannot be successful as productive escapism and immersive perspectivism going forward.
This reading sparked my brain to think of the current landscape of our science fiction stories and analyze why we're seeing so many of the same dystopian themes, and the articles notions that the "toy-ification" of how afrofuturism detracts the gravitas from the real-life plights of africans and black people made me wonder how we can improve our science fiction in a way that respects the past in its depiction of the future rather than mining it for shallow dystopian drama. Since around the 90s, our popular science fiction has largely been dystopian rather than utopian, where it's more popular to have a cynical take on the present or in the years to come. I think this also explains the exponential surge in Superhero stories; we've likely grown fatigued of the simple dystopia and now want to feel empowered to change it. Many pro- and con- criticisms of this genre as absolutely valid, but I do believe it's an excellent exhibition for the next turn of science fiction and potentially lays the groundwork for how we can avoid this dissonance between science fiction and real life issues. For example, let's look at 2018's impressive box office success, Marvel Studios' Black Panther. I mean in no way to tout this film as a masterpiece of fiction, however it is absolutely vital to recognize the significance of how it depicted afrofuturism and how exorbitantly positive the public's reaction to it was. This film's central conflict dons current-day racism and social inequality as a heavy vest, and it actively plots its protagonist to face the consequences of that head-on while also depicting an optimistic high-tech city hidden in East Africa. This film was met with astounding praise from the public because rather than appropriating historically black and POC struggles into a white-washed Young Adult Novel dystopia, it fully admitted the failings of today's and yesterday's society while simultaneously showing what good could come out of tomorrow. Most importantly, the film also empowers its audience through emotionally resonating with T'Challa and the people of Wakanda as they learn to dedicate using their wealth to help people affected by social inequality.
This is the framework of how science fiction needs to evolve in order to become productive escapism that doesn't fall into the failings of past futurism as Eshun's article displayed. We need to be unafraid to depict the hard truths of our world as they are in order to give weight to our visions of the future in a respectful and meaningful way. That will enable people to feel inspired and empowered to incite change in our real universe.