Thursday, July 14, 2011
Introducing President Barack Obama, "Space Coon"
As a ghetto nerd, I love some good science fiction. As a ghetto nerd military history buff grognard I am a sucker for a good counter-factual or "what if?" scenario. Much of the latter is pure pablum--although I have to admit that I have a soft-spot for Harry Turtledove's epic Civil War/World War 1/World War 2 alternate universe series. Nevertheless, various examples of the sci-fi "what if?" genre often hit a a sweet spot when one is looking for some late night at the bar drinking some Stella reading.
I recently stumbled upon the book Weapons of Choice which takes 21st century military technology, adds some The Final Countdown elements, and puts the U.S. Navy of the year 2021 in the middle of the Battle of Midway (I won't give away any more details). Weapons of Choice is also great fun because the author doesn't shy away from exploring how the social norms of the 21st century, especially those surrounding race and gender, would befuddle many Jim Crow era white Americans.
Weapons of Choice features a great moment where one of the white bigots in the World War 2 era U.S. Navy is shocked by the people of color he encounters and how they have mastered the stuff of Amazing Stories and Flash Gordon. In an inferiority laced moment of frustration said character utters a priceless phrase, "space coons," to describe these near-alien Americans from the future.
As a ghetto nerd, and connoisseur of racial slurs, "space coons" leaped off of the page and instantly into my mental Rolodex. Space coons also triggered a series of connected thoughts on the whiteness of science fiction.
Historically, classic sci-fi was embraced as a site of imagination that freed readers and authors to envision a world that was radically humanistic and progressive. While wonderfully imaginative and inclusive (in their best instances), in its worst iterations the genre was quite literally a "white" space where robots and aliens stood in for people of color and the Other.
In classic science fiction the protagonist was often a white man encountering an untamed world that represented the various colonial and imperial projects of the West. Alternatively, he was a time traveler who arrived in a world where a peaceful White civilization was under siege and its members were quite literally consumed by savages coded as non-white. At its heart, so much of golden age science fiction was satisfying to the the White gaze precisely because black and brown folks were not present. The race problem was solved, and thus a Utopia created, by removing what was understood to be the root of the trouble.
Never to be rendered silent or excluded, there is a rich tradition of African American speculative fiction--the Delanys, Mosleys, Schuylers, Butlers, Ellisons, and Morrisons of the world--that stand as rebuttals against the whiteness of science fiction. In parallel, there is also a growing critical literature on the role of race in the sci-fi genre.
For example, Isiah Lavender makes a great point in his book Race in American Science Fiction where he smartly suggests that Barack Obama is quintessentially the stuff of science fiction because for most of this country's history the bounded nature of racialized citizenship deemed an African American President an impossibility.
When considered from this critical framework (with policy preferences and partisanship placed aside) President Obama is a figure of The Fantastic.
Some have been suggested that President Obama is a bound man because of his role as a racial triangulator. Echoing Isiah, I would double down and add some additional nuance to his sharp observation: the figure of President Obama was/is the stuff of fantasy and wish fulfillment. He should not exist. Yet, he does.
As a fantastical figure his very personhood frightens so many because given the weight of history a black man could not (and should not) be President of the United States. As a figure that is the stuff of speculative fiction and sci-fi (or perhaps more rightly Afrofuturism and Black Science Fiction), Obama is also a vessel for the hopes and dreams of many Americans. Thus, the tears when he was elected...and an impossible standard which he cannot hope to reach as the first black President of The United States of America.
Thus, my suggestion that President Obama is a space coon. He isn't alone. For any negro or negress who turns up where you least expect them and in defiance of Whiteness and the White Imagination is one too.
That isn't a bad thing per se. His status as a space coon goes a long way towards explaining the virulent and hateful antipathy faced by President Obama from embittered Right-wing, White racial reactionary populists. President Obama's identity as a space coon also explains the frustration felt by many who seek a savior amd hero in the form of a black man who happens to be President. In total, confronting the unbelievable and heretofore unimaginable can generate no small amount of either cognitive upset and/or wild eyed dreaming.
Ultimately, space coons are people too. They both inspire and amaze. And they cannot help but to disappoint.