Today I showed my class Einstein’s God Model. An hour into the film I still haven’t seen a black person. There are Asians and Hispanics but no black people anywhere. I might add that this film is shot in Chicago. I might also add that the protagonist is a doctor who runs in academic circles. All of this adds up to a worldview that has become all too common–a world built of civility and science that is utterly without black people. The media representations of blacks has improved significantly over the course of my existence but the core philosophy of black as lesser or criminal remains. Black people are only treated as token representatives of any stable society of civilized–even advanced–people. The one exception to this is the portrayal of fictional African royalty–namely the fictional nations portrayed in Coming to America and the Wakandans of Marvel lore. The rest of us are barely graduated above animals, and in a dystopic or post apocalyptic future we hardly exist. Consider the basis of shows like the Walking Dead, The Road, etc. Think about the Hunger Games and its ilk. Even Harry Potter treated blacks as marginal/background characters–though JK Rowling made it clear that Hermione is quite likely black yet did not bat an eye at her white portrayal.
I don’t know what all of this means for the continued perception of blacks, but I worry that it means we will always be viewed and treated as something less than we are and whenever we excel it wont be met with a sense of expected success but instead surprise and a collective holding of one’s breath until we eventually go back to our anamalistic ways.