To be beautiful is To Be Real

 Darryl Smith’s “The Pretended” is a story about a world where Black peoples bodies have been essentially replaced by robots to uphold the illusion in white minds that Black people are not human. In the story the robots are programmed to be Black rather than human as if those two things are different. The main character of the story, Mnemosyne, her mother, and Diva Eve are on a train because they “don’t function” but in reality their lack of functionality comes from the fact that they are overly human because they were programmed to be Black which IS human. 

In the story they discuss why they don't make any white robots, which I found really interesting. Mnemosyne said that they don't make white robots because they’d be too beautiful which would make them real. The Black robots on the other hand don’t get to be beautiful which makes them disposable and inhuman. I thought this was a clever way to explain how much beauty standards impact dehumanization of black people. While this story may seem extreme to some I found it rather witty and clever. 

I also thought Diva Eve’s commentary about white people was quite intriguing. When talking about them she said that all the robots were made so that white people could keep pretending. Pretending that there was a separation between Black and human or that the creation of these robots might soothe their guilt. Of course that is the title of the work, but I thought it was important to point out.