The Space Traders

The novellette 'The Space Traders' by Derrick Bell posits a simple question. Aliens land and tell America that they can have a clean environment, cheap energy and more gold than they could ever need with one condition, that they can take all the black Americans with them into space. When I was reading this I was practically pleading for the story to take the black Americans to some kind of sanctuary, but even that was harrowing to contemplate as a 'best outcome'. What Bell asks is, 'are you prepared to give up a whole tranche of your population' so the rest can be better off. It's an inhumane question. It's a racist question.

And yet, in a generation of culture wars it is one being played out every day. I imagine a significant proportion of the UK would vote 'yes' to sending Muslims into space, or trans people, or black people, or any oppressed group. I imagine the US is no different. The story is so powerful - it views the black population as a scapegoat for all societies ills, they are in a lose-lose situation. The story is framed as much in protecting white people's conscience as much as the moral implications. It depicts black - and by extension working class people as valuable only in so much as they generate profit.

The book predicts with scary accuracy the demagoguery of Trump and (in the UK) the notion of 'enemies of the state' and how legal apparatus is perverted and used to justify any kind of evil. It is scarily prophetic and in many respects represents today as reality (okay we have no aliens) but it seems society is more racist now than in the 90's.