{"id":10415,"date":"2016-06-21T23:45:32","date_gmt":"2016-06-21T23:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/when-racism-and-scifi-collide\/"},"modified":"2016-06-21T23:45:32","modified_gmt":"2016-06-21T23:45:32","slug":"when-racism-and-scifi-collide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/when-racism-and-scifi-collide\/","title":{"rendered":"When Racism and Scifi collide"},"content":{"rendered":"

afroscifigirl<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Confession: I
\nhave never read anything from HP Lovecraft.
\nI probably should – after all, he contributed enormously to what is now
\nmy favourite genre, but I\u2019ve never felt the pull to pick up one of his books.
\nHowever, I\u2019m not completely useless. I have done my research on him, and his
\nstories. \u00a0His plotlines are fantastical.
\nWithout Lovecraft\u2019s contribution, we would not have the glory of Cthulhu
\nrunning for president in the US elections. He was creating science fiction
\nworks before it was science fiction.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

We have HP Lovecraft to thank for this existing on the Internet.<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Lovecraft was a great contributor. Lovecraft was also racist. Pretty racist<\/a>. Hectically racist. Practically everything I\u2019ve read about Lovecraft the man and
\nthe writer indicates that he had a less than friendly attitude towards people
\nwho were not of his skin tone. \u00a0And for a
\nscifi reader, it\u2019s a bitter pill to swallow that someone who helped create the
\ngenre would think of you as a lesser human.<\/p>\n

Introducing la Valle<\/h2>\n
<\/figure>\n

So how do I
\nnavigate that space? \u00a0Luckily enough,
\nsomeone had already thought of that question before I did. \u00a0Tammy Oler<\/a> explores this sticky situation
\nthrough the work of another scifi writer.
\nVictor la Valle takes one of Lovecraft\u2019s stories, The Horror at Red Hook<\/i>, and remixes the story, retelling it through
\nthe eyes of one of its black characters. The
\nBallad of Black Tom<\/a><\/i> humanizes the character Tommy, and LaValle marries the
\nfictional setting to the reality of black people in 1920s New York (and modern
\ntimes too). It was interesting, reading about an author who looked at
\nLovecraft\u2019s work specifically with a racial angle.<\/p>\n

SciFi and Racism<\/h2>\n

How does this
\nrelate to science fiction in general? There are other instances of racism, or
\nthe least, racial insensitivity, in well-known scifi books. \u00a0The other example that comes to mind is Dune.<\/i> Frank Herbert is the writer
\nresponsible for launching me into the world of scifi. I love that book like
\ncrazy. I am strongly considering getting a Litany against Fear tattoo. Yet the
\nWhite Saviour Complex in Dune<\/i> grates
\nmy brain. \u00a0But that\u2019s for another day.<\/p>\n

If I had zero motivation to read Lovecraft now, my motivation is in negative numbers. Avoiding his work doesn\u2019t solve the sticky situation of racism in scifi, but it does mean that I remove unnecessary feelings that will get in the way of me enjoying what is a wonderful universe of alternate futures and realities. And it motivates me to do, in my own small way, whatever I can to correct the racial imbalance.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

afroscifigirl: Confession: I have never read anything from HP Lovecraft. I probably should – after all, he contributed enormously to what is now my favourite genre, but I\u2019ve never felt the pull to pick up one of his books. However, I\u2019m not completely useless. I have done my research on him, and his stories. \u00a0His […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-2HZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}