I have quietly been working on a fantasy world. I haven’t looked at the greater world–not in the way the George RR Martin dreamed up the world beyond Westeros. I do know the central city state and region of the story and have been hard at work dreaming up the physics of the thing. What I find more interesting than those physics (needed in order to make the world make sense) are the history and politics. I am informed by our own oft deleted history. For example, I was never taught about the Red Summer of 1919 when White Supremacists murdered nearly 1000 black people across the country in what was as close as possible to an uprising responding to the growing pressure for black rights. I learned about that last month. I did hear often about Nat Turner and often as a tale of what not to do–to not rebel and kill the white folks. This is the history I was taught.
In places all over the south a different history is taught to this day. In these alternative histories the slaves were just employees or plantations were great places to work where everyone was treated well. It is all very Gone with the Wind, but those of us who have common sense know Gone is fiction. The history books thrust in front of children are not considered fiction and kids in some places are growing up not understanding what slavery was and thus not understanding why Black Lives Matter exists.
This story is going to tackle some of those issues with a relative distance that allows me to examine them and dissect them and tell stories about how we choose to remember and what we choose to accept, and of course, who has the power to determine these things. It is not all about money either.
Some Thoughts:
- Here’s a simple way to respond to all lives matter: All lives cannot matter until black lives matter.
- I say this because a writer friend posted a photo of the back of someone’s car where they had scribbled , “All lives matter xcept (sic) black ones.” Yeah, folks be like that.