Brother From Another Planet

There are certain islands of American life and culture into which black folks were accepted even while most walks of life were closed to them.

The first, cynically enough, was the military. There is, I think, something cynical about a nation that would pride itself on "allowing" black folks to die for the flag well before those very folks were allowed to vote.

Around the the time the military was fully integrated in 1946, two more realms of our culture were opened gradually to blacks: music and sports. Music and sports, however gradually they were opened to black participation on equal terms, remain the twin loci of ghetto youth to this day.

Again, this can be said to be a bit cynical, since the dynamic remains that the best a poor black child can hope to do is to one day amuse and entertain everyone else. However, a bit of this angst is surely assuaged by the fact that young black men can now make tens of millions of dollars for doing nothing more than entertain white people.

Another realm which was opened up to blacks relatively early was TV and movies, but at first it was only a specific genre that welcomed blacks. In the 40', 50's, 60's, and onwards, blacks were rarely featured in any remotely empowering roles in TV or movies. The exception was science fiction.

Blacks, and minorities in general, were feature far more often and far more prominently in science fiction movies and TV shows far before more mainstream and more "realistic"fare.

Watch any old sci-fi movie or TV show, from Star Trek to Star Wars, from Planet of the Apes to Alien, and you will see black astronauts, female generals, and everything in between. They literally jump off the screen when compared to other mainstream movies and shows of the same eras, which are dominated exclusively by white men.

While I have never been interested in Star Trek per se, I can't help but notice that a black woman and a (gay) Asian man were officers on the spaceship when the show premiered in 1966. Vintage sci-fi has endless examples of empowered minorities of all stripes in a time when all other genres conspicuously lacked melanin and estrogen.

This speaks to the reason that sci-fi appeals to so many people. Sci-fi is about the future, so the authors can project aspirations that don't seem "realistic" to the audience. Flying cars. Talking computers. Black presidents. 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

By planting the seed in the audience's consciousness, could sci-fi material have played a part in the growing tolerance and inclusiveness in our culture? Perhaps. Or I suppose it could have been done simply for shock value. But I'm inclined to feel that it was indicative of an open-mindedness that was ahead of its time.

I recall the first time I ever saw a movie with a black president. It was Deep Impact, about an asteroid headed to destroy the earth. Morgan Freeman was the president. The most interesting thing about the film was that the asteroid actually hit earth and killed most people on the planet. No bottom-of-the-ninth Bruce Willis heroics to be found.

What was also interesting was that the president was black. This film was made at a time when the idea of a black president had been made at least plausible by recent speculation that Colin Powell would run in 1996.

In retrospect, it was a master-stroke by the writers; it appealed to liberals by portraying a black president as entirely realistic. And it appealed to everyone else by making it clear that the first black president would be the last, and hey, at least it was Morgan Freeman.

I have been convinced that tolerance for diversity is not inevitable; it takes pushing. It takes confrontation. These confrontations need not be overt, however. Sometimes they are accomplished passively, artfully, by the kids who got picked on in high school. Sometimes it takes a Trekkie.