AHA Session 119A
Friday, January 7, 2022: 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
Mardi Gras Ballroom E (New Orleans Marriott, 3rd Floor)
Chair:
Sheena Harris, West Virginia University
Panel:
Le'Trice D Donaldson, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi
Jennifer Williams, Loyola Marymount University
Derrick Lanois, Norfolk State University
Jennifer Williams, Loyola Marymount University
Derrick Lanois, Norfolk State University
Comment:
The Audience
Session Abstract
Nyota Uhura was a fictional character on the original Star Trek and she was an African American. Although, Uhura never spoke about race within the confines of the show but Nichelle Nichols the actress who played her gave the character her name. Uhura is a Swahili word for freedom but Nichols was not free to take Blackness into the future. In these alternative realities and imagined futures, Blackness was pretty much erased as a lived experience and culture within these fictional universes. Black bodies without Blackness was still seen as win within the African American community because of the politics of representation. By the 21st century, mainstream sci-fi started to explore race and racial identity but many of these were almost exclusively set in alternative realities where superheroes fight crime—Luke Cage, Black Lightening, Black Panther, and The Watchmen (Sister Night). Each of these shows tackled not only race but African American history, memory, and the present issues of race and oppression. The future, however, has yet to produce a mainstream movie or show that allows for race to exist. Movies and shows create a collective identity and memory and serve as nuance way to do public history. This form of public history comes with messaging about race but from whose perspective and agenda? Many African Americans identified with the “villain” Killmonger in Black Panther because he spoke to the frustration and rage African Americans feel today over the historical oppressions they have faced. What happens when gender, class, sexualities, and transgender are projected into the future but race is erased from the future? This panel explores these questions using Afrofuturism that centers African descendant people’s ideas about reimagining today and tomorrow using these films and shows to create a collective identity and memory. With K-12th grade history being attacked as teaching critical race theory, the narrative film and tv shows have a new responsibility of teaching public history.
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