(no subject)

[randomness]

From Adrienne Crew's latest piece, on time travel fiction. Third installment of ten in her Afrofuturism series on Hilobrow.

For an American of African descent, the notion of traveling to the past is a painful one. In no matter which time period a person like me might arrive, if I’m in Europe or a European colony, I might very likely be raped, enslaved, lynched, or all of the above. I’ve asked African American friends about which past time period they’d most like to visit, and they always agree with me that the present is the best. Brandi Brown, a young African American stand-up comedian who formerly worked in advertising, once joked that when she was asked, “Don’t you wish you could go back and work in the time of Mad Men?, her response was: “I would not like that at all! I’m a huge fan of my current rights.” The very idea of time travel, for African Americans, heightens our anxiety about the history of anti-black white supremacy in the world.

#Outlander ,#siemprebruj, #AydreaWalden, #hollybass, #backtothefuture, #sankofaand #Kindred

Comments

[minoanmiss]

WORD. I can't believe someone asked Ms. Brown that to her face.

Being me I have thought about this, and I think, with the right money and getup, I could safely travel to Rome between 100 and 300 AD (during times of peace only) or back to the Bronze Age to Egypt and my beloved Minoan Crete.

Or to various precolonial cities of Africa, of course, but I still hardly have any idea what I'd need, and there are sociopolitical reasons for these lacunae in my education. *makes a note to continue researching*

But yeah, "Kindred" is the prototypical story of time travel for an African American for very good reason.

[randomness]

Yes, all of this.

I joked to bedfull_o_books that I supposed time travel to any time in the first ten months of 2016 would be okay...

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

they always agree with me that the present is the best

Though that's true for just about every type of person as well, if not so acutely.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

There are a remarkable number of white fans who don't, though. That there are more white fans who feel this way than fans of color is kind of the point.

If you're saying they all ought to agree that the present is best, you'll get no argument from me.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

True ... It's easy to romanticize the past if there are no particular annoyances of the present that you perceive strongly in the past, and white fans are probably particularly vulnerable to that. OTOH, it's also easy to anti-romanticize the past, and think that the worst parts of the past are the ones that resonate somehow with the problems of the present, or that they played out in the past in a way that neatly parallels the present. It's easy to recall the horrors of slavery in the US in 1800, considerably harder to remember that it was also ubiquitous in Africa in 1800, but nobody seems to comment that (as far as I can tell) slavery was routine everywhere in the world in AD 1000.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my feeling is I'd likely be dead already in just about any past period that doesn't include the medications I'm currently taking. I'm under no illusions on that score.

Also, I like vaccines.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there are so many distinct ways the past sucked.

Just imagine what people 200 years hence will say about us!