Whitey On the Moon

 Mark Bould’s “The Ship Landed Long Ago: AfroFuturism and Black SF” is an excerpt from “Science Fiction Studies” that discusses Black life as it relates to science fiction. Bould talk a lot about how more mainstream science fiction ignores racial issues even though science fiction inherently includes Black voices when you think about artists like Jimi Hendrix or Earth, Wind, and Fire. 

One of the most interesting ideas I felt that he pointed out was the idea that science fiction might be able to “transcend” racial politics because it was otherworldly or so futuristic that it made race relations nearly trivial. If you are writing about non-human races then how could something like a stereotype even matter?

Bould, shortly after bringing it up, begins to point out the flaws in this school of thought, but I still think it's interesting to point out. Art, no matter how realistic, is the product of a human  mind and in our case those minds are racialized. I think that's what is fundamental about understanding race relations, at least in this country. No one person or one thing or one idea can possibly transcend something so much larger than themselves like race relations. 

I also thought it was interesting how he pointed out Gil Scott Heron’s “Whitey on the Moon” The song is a mockery of white space travel and how outrageous it is that Black people are fighting for basic needs while their oppressors are running around on the moon. The snarky attitude of this work perfectly aligns with Bould’s tone in the piece.