Science Fiction and the 2008 Race for President

My first introduction to race came when my family moved from California to Alabama in August of 1964. We were walking down the street to pick up a bottle of wine. My Dad had been out of work for a year. We were so very happy. I was practically dancing down the street. I turned into the package store ahead of my folks and stopped, confused.

The counter was in one side of the room. The rest of the room was open so people could line up to get whatever liquor they wanted. In the middle of the room, dividing the counter in two, was a metal railing. Blacks were on one side-- the side I had entered-- whites were on the other. Both sides were looking at me.

My Dad reached in and pulled me out. He pointed to the label on the doorway I had entered: Colored. I had reached the segregated South.

I've been trying to wrap my head around this ever since. Sometimes I've written about it explicitly as in my story, Stegosaurus Boy. Other times, aliens, gorillas and mystical beings have been stand-ins for aspects of this black and white conflict as I've tried to take it apart and understand it.

In science fiction and fantasy there is this recurring motif of a character who is destined to bridge gaps between peoples. Like the devil it goes by many names. In Star Wars, there is a prophecy of a Jedi who will bring balance to the force. In Fritz Lang's Metropolis, perhaps the greatest science fiction film ever made, Freder, the son of the ruler of Metropolis, is destined to bridge the gap between the elite and the low born workers. In Le Guin's The Dispossessed, Shevek, a physicist, spends his life trying to unbuild walls between the populations of Anarres and its moon Urras. In Cordwainer Smith's Norstrilia, a boy who manages to buy the earth also becomes a big part in the unification between humans and underpeople, though this happens generations later. Sometimes this destiny is foretold, such as in Metropolis. Sometimes it arises out of character, as in The Dispossessed. My own story, Stegosaurus Boy, takes place over the summer of 1964 when the Civil Rights workers were killed in Mississippi and its impact on a boy who loves fossils.

So, I'm driving in today and I'm listening to an NPR article on Barack Obama in Kansas, how he has departed from his normal stump speech there and instead is drawing a picture of his heritage. I was struck by the shape of his life-- born into a family where the father leaves at an early age and he's raised by a single mother. This is a leitmotif of the African American experience. But in this case, the single mother is white.

In the article he singled out his white cousins. Now, you have to understand that one idea that was drummed into me in Alabama is how one drop of black blood made you black. The power of black ancestry trumped all other considerations. People have been known to murder an unexpected black child or murder the mother. I had come to measure the level of integration within a community by observing how many mixed couples I saw.

Yet here is this seventy-one year old white woman enthusiastically claiming a relationship with this young black man.

Tavis Smiley, among others, have question whether Obama is "black enough". I think they have missed the point the way they misunderstood the idea that a white man pushing for Civil Rights (LBJ) might in any way tarnish the legacy of Martin Luther King. They way the Clintons misjudged their political moment and tried to paint Obama with the Reagan brush only to watch it detonate in front of them. The way that people have said the Obama candidacy isn't about race.

It's all about race but it's not about the divide. It's about uniting, as Americans, toward a common destiny.

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Internal Cell Clocks: Matching an organisms circadian rhythm to cellular rhythms.
Boosting African Soil: Managing the earth is more than just protecting whales.
Squirrels are Smarter Than You Think
Pouting Kills: Go out there and fight with your spouse.