A Reply To Lauren's Post

Having read Black No More alongside Lauren in our Afrofuturism class I have much to say in response to her post. Black No More was one of the more interesting novels we read in that class because of it's satirical approach to our perception of race. Schuyler had a talent for creating stereotypical characters and satirizing them to the point where they are unidentifiable characters.

The shifting color line is an apparent theme in Black No More and one that I wrote on in my final paper for that course. The way Schuyler critiques our perception of a distinct color line is brilliant. Schuyler is speaking to our determination in creation a color line, rather then what a color line really is. As blacks become white, white's search for a way to make themselves distinct. Black No More is a novel that critiques hierarchy by flipping it's idea on itself. The ending demands this reading by revealing that the "true" whites can be identified because the "false" whites are "too" white, causing society to embrace blackness because it it now distinct and acceptable. Schuyler is brilliant is in his attempt to make us see how useless a color line is and how easily the color line can shift.

The blatant contradinctions are important in this text, because they further the misconception of a "pure race". The racist white leader, in fact, has a black background in his family. Max is adopted into this racist group because of his smarts, although if they knew he was black they would say he is beneath them and unintelligent. Dr. Crookman wants to save society by making the color line dissapear, yet his wife is extremely light skinned, a woman, and I quote, that could "pass for white anyday".

Black No More is a wonderful piece of afrofuturistic work because it uses humor as a way to explore the shifting color line. It explores how we define the color line and what we think is important in racial identity.

ToeJam & Earl: A Look at Afrofuturism in Video Games

 To grasp the concept of ToeJam and Earl you must first look at what it is trying to be. ToeJam and Earl is a video game from the 1990's that introduced these funky alien characters, obviously based on popular hip hop culture at this time, and brought them to earth on a wrecked Spaceship that they must rebuild so they can go back to their home planet.

ToeJam and Earl are alien rappers who are foreign creatures on earth, and they battle several different type of villains on their adventure. Interestingly enough, the developers have ToeJam and Earl fighting an all white evil group who don't understand the aliens hip music, slang, clothes, and obvious alien features.  The soundtrack for the game is a mix of African funk and hip-hop and the character designs are obviously critiques of urban culture at that time. After the games release, several publications noted the satire the game designers had for urban culture at the time and several designers for ToeJam and Earl have states their vision was to skew the perception of urban culture by making it alien - making it foreign.

The Wikipedia page for ToeJam and Earl states, "ToeJam & Earl has been called a surreal, comic satire,^[1] and a "daringly misanthropic commentary on Earthly life".^[2] The game's protagonists, ToeJam and Earl, have been described as a "three-legged red alien" and "fat orange alien", respectively.^[3] ToeJam wears a large gold medallion and a backwards baseball cap, while Earl is marked by high-tops and oversized sunglasses; both outfits are "over-the-top appropriations" of 1990s urban culture.^[1] Their speech features California slang.^[4]" 


ToeJam and Earl is interesting because it has only recently been recognized as a work of Afrofuturism. It took looking back at the direction of the game to realize what they had subconsciously created in a video game. ToeJam and Earl is the story of alien rappers who can't fit into Earth culture and must build a starship to head back to their funky roots, a seemingly simple story that we see in many pieces of Afrofuturism.

How do we interpret Butler's intentions in Dawn?

What is the primary goal of the Oankali? What is the importance of the Oankali creating/redefining our current understanding of humanity? What is Octavia Butler trying to suggest with the human characters split reactions to the redefining of humanity and what is at stake/to gain in this new form of humanity?