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Is Afrofuturism the Answer to Our Current Crises?
As we weather ravaging climate changes and rampant White supremacy, it is important for Black people to imagine what could be
“There is nothing left…no power no water no light no infrastructure whatsoever,” Témar Kellman writes in a Facebook post. “It’s worse than what you are seeing on the news.” Kellman’s is one of several accounts of the total devastation Bahamians have suffered in the wake of Hurricane Dorian. There’s no accurate death toll as bodies unaccounted for float in the water, an estimated 70,000 are left with no homes, and towns like Marsh Harbour, whose inhabitants have evacuated in search of safety, are left barren.
Dorian is the most destructive hurricane ever to hit the Bahamas, and as climate change worsens, hurricanes as destructive as Dorian will only become more common. Though for many, climate change seems an abstraction of the distant future, or even still a myth, the Bahamas have had to bear the brunt of climate change’s effects for years, even though the islands boast a small carbon footprint. Now, the Bahamas, a country that is over 90% Black, wonders what the future holds after an event some are calling an “apocalypse.” What kind of world is possible for Black people at the end of this one?
The question of Black futurity is one that Black speculative fiction writers have tackled for over a century, from Edward A. Johnson’s Light Ahead for the Negro to Octavia Butler’s Parable series. When Mark Dery, in a 1993 conversation with writers Greg Tate, Tricia Rose, and Samuel R. Delany, coined the term “Afrofuturism” to provisionally describe a movement of Black speculative fiction yet to come — one that would attend to African American experiences in a 20th-century technocultural context — the term took on a life of its own.
“There is an urgent need among Black folks to imagine ourselves in the future.”
Now, the term Afrofuturism has become a mainstay in recent discussions of Black art. In August, Missy Elliott accepted the MTV Video Vanguard Award with a performance that demonstrated the futuristic aesthetic that has marked her three-decades-long career. Dancers dressed as androids…
