Inner Love, Outer Hatred: The Beginning and End of a Nation as Predicted by Black Empire

In reading George Schuyler’s Black Empire, we witness the rise of a great black nation as Doctor Belsidus leads legions of loyal, intelligent men and women to superiority.  He expertly designs and executes his strategies through careful manipulations through the fear, loyalty, ambition, hate, and in some cases love of those that follow him. Cold and calculating, Belsidus seems to able to feel only one emotion: blinding hatred for the white race.

Of One Blood: Race Lost in Melodrama

Of One Blood, while being a story focused around a utopia, is first and foremost a melodrama.  The story has a hero (Reuel), a heroine (Dianthe), a comic character (Charlie), and a villain (Aubrey).  The story is fraught with romantic intentions upon a female character who is lost, innocent, and doe-eyed.  The unhappy ending seems entirely avoidable, making it all the more tragic.  Despite the sad ending, poetic justice is achieved through Reuel’s orders.

The novel also contains the three P’s of melodrama: 1. Provocation, Reuel, after bringing Dianthe back from the grave, wishes to marry her and therefore leaves to Africa in search of wealth; 2. Pangs, While Reuel is away, Dianthe succumbs to Aubrey’s wishes despite that she is married; and 3. Penalty, Aubrey kills himself as a punishment for his crimes due to a spell cast by Ai.

Imperium in Imperio: The Racial Rainbow and Its Spectrum of Privileges

In Imperium in Imperio, we watch as Belton Peidmont and Bernard Belgrave struggle with the reality of harsh discrimination against their heritage. It's seen throughout the book that their differing skin tones serve as a base for a spectrum of privilege. Belton is a first-hand victim of racial abuse, but Bernard, being of a much lighter skin tone, feels the sharp jab of this discrimination not from a white adversary but through the harsh treatment of his professed love.

But that's getting ahead of myself.

The Hunger Games and Philosophy: Discipline and the Docile Body

I found the idea that the Capitol citizens were strictly controlled through their supposed freedom to be fascinating. Christina Van Dyke explains that Capitol society is structured to focus on fashion and society life because it draws attention away from politics and toward the self, which places President Snow in a relatively safe haven.

Capitol life centers on body modifications as an expression of self, which is essentially the only way they can achieve such. As far as the reader can see, there is no art, no literature, nothing to encourage depth of thought or character.

The Capitol hinges on social norms, manners and perspectives. Citizens are self-centered and attention-seeking. They are that way because they don't know how else to be.

Interestingly enough, Hank Green (of the vlogbrothers, a YouTube sensation) created a video talking about the implications of social norms that both compares and contrasts with Van Dyke's thoughts on the world of Panem and specifically the Capitol and further applies it to what that world reflects onto us as a privileged society in our own rights.





I'd like to see these two sit down and discuss their opinions on the series.

Deep End and Mark Dery: Black to the Future

"MARK DERY: The positioning of oneself, literally, as a stranger in a strange land.
GREG TATE: Right, and there are certainly long-standing spiritual traditions that lend themselves to that impulse: Santeria, voudon, and the hoodoo religion that Ishmael Reed talks about.
MARK DERY: It’s worth pointing out, in the context of what I’ve chosen to call “Afrofuturism,” that the mojos and goofer dust of Delta blues, together with the lucky charms, fetishes, effigies, and other devices employed in syncretic belief systems, such as voodoo, hoodoo, santeria, mambo, and macumba, function very much like the joysticks, Datagloves, Waldos, and Spaceballs used to control virtual realities. Jerome Rothenburg would call them technologies of the sacred.
GREG TATE: I agree, although I think you’re putting the interstellar carriage before the Egyptian horse, in a way. I see science fiction as continuing a vein of philosophical inquiry and technological speculation that begins with the Egyptians and their incredibly detailed meditations on life after death."

“But Wayna’s body was hers. No one else owned it, no matter who her clone’s cells had started off with. Hers, no matter how different it looked from the one she had been born with. How white.”