(Untitled)

[r_ness]

From Adrienne Crew's latest piece, on time travel fiction. Third installment of ten in her Afrofuturism series on Hilobrow.For an American of African descent, the notion of traveling to the past is a painful one. In no matter which time period a person like me might arrive, if I’m in Europe or a European colony, I might very likely be raped,

Comments

[achinhibitor]

they always agree with me that the present is the best

Though that's true for just about every type of person as well, if not so acutely.

[r_ness]

There are a remarkable number of white fans who don't, though. That there are more white fans who feel this way than fans of color is kind of the point.

If you're saying they all ought to agree that the present is best, you'll get no argument from me.

[achinhibitor]

True ... It's easy to romanticize the past if there are no particular annoyances of the present that you perceive strongly in the past, and white fans are probably particularly vulnerable to that. OTOH, it's also easy to anti-romanticize the past, and think that the worst parts of the past are the ones that resonate somehow with the problems of the present, or that they played out in the past in a way that neatly parallels the present. It's easy to recall the horrors of slavery in the US in 1800, considerably harder to remember that it was also ubiquitous in Africa in 1800, but nobody seems to comment that (as far as I can tell) slavery was routine everywhere in the world in AD 1000.

[r_ness]

Yeah, my feeling is I'd likely be dead already in just about any past period that doesn't include the medications I'm currently taking. I'm under no illusions on that score.

Also, I like vaccines.