Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture Read Online Free PDF Page A

and superiority. Even Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad taught that the white race was invented by an evil scientist. Others, in an attempt to counter racism, developed an odd science claiming that melanin gave brown people better intuitive or superhuman abilities.
    Frankly, as much as people analyze race in the public discourse, it’s rarely discussed as an invention to regulate social order. Even those who advocate against injustice rarely broach race as a creation. The argument could have the same consequences as that of post-racialists, who say that racial divisions no longer exist. How does one discuss the realities of the pain and social maladies caused by lack of equity and at the same time say that race is a creation? Are the injustices imagined too? When Roberts was a guest, and I a guest cohost, on WVON’s
Matt McGill Morning Show
in Chicago, one angered caller asked, “Well, if race is an invention and not real, how do you explain racism?” Roberts shared that the politics and social measures as well as the laws and injustices around race are real. However, race is not some default biological category, although it is a social and political identity.
    The whole contemplation ripped the lid off a Pandora’s box of questions for me. What decisions do we make because of the limitations or expectations we associate with race? If we cast off those limitations, how would our social lives change? Would we have the same friendships? Live in the same neighborhoods? Go to the same schools? I’d pose these questions to audiences, and it was a daunting thought. Outer obstacles aside, what role have we played in limiting our own lives based on race? Thiscontemplation ultimately led to the
Rayla 2212
series. I wanted to write about a world of people of color where race as we know it today was not a factor. But I also wanted the challenge of writing about people of color without using today’s ethnic cultures as an identity or backdrop while still denoting the value of the cultures in their past and our present. It was a very Afrofuturistic experiment. For that, I had to take my story to space.
The Birth of the Post-Human
    In the fall of 2011, I received a call from Hank Pellissier, then a fellow with the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Pellissier was looking for futurists to submit essays. The institute is also a proponent of transhumanism, a futurist philosophy that explores the possibilities of a post-human life. Being human, as we understand it today, could evolve with new technologies. Could science extend our life span by three hundred years? Could new medicine curtail the need for sleep? Transhumanists believe in maximizing human potential and look to exceed human limitations, physical and otherwise, with new medicine, nanotechnology, or robotic culture. Some transhumanists boldly claim that by 2045, humans will officially merge with machines. Ironic, I thought, because that same decade is predicted to mark the beginning of the majority-minority America.
    Nevertheless, transhumanism is a fascinating concept. One day being plain old human could be old school. Physicalities like childbirth (which is already being revolutionized), eating, or death could be tokens of the distant past. But in stretching my imagination to grasp the prospects of post-human life, I found myself thinking about what it means to be human.
    We don’t give a great deal of thought to being human, although history is marred with theories about and battles over human rights. While some politics and rights are debated, there are some agreed-upon human rights that supersede nationality, politics, and expectations—human rights that are deemed inalienable. Life, liberty, and the security of person are among those espoused in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the belief that we’re all “born free.”
    At least this is the general consensus today.
    But at one