Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism

Aliens land off the coast of the United States in aircraft-carrier-style ships one day. They offer gold enough to bail out the nearly bankrupt United States, energy enough to power the country for a century, and clean technology that would avert the environmental disaster that threatens the country and the planet. In exchange, they want the US to give them every African American in the United States for transport off the planet and into an unknown future. The trade will happen on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. They threaten no violence but know the nearly bankrupt, dirty country teetering on the edge of environmental destruction will likely accept.

People begin calling them “Space Traders,” and everyone knows the deal is almost guaranteed to go through. Most white people see the aliens as some kind of saviors or superheroes. Most African Americans see them as malevolent. White people ignore African Americans’ insight because of the rule of racial standing that says that African Americans talking about African Americans are to be ignored (see Rule 1 in Chapter 6: “The Rules of Racial Standing”).

The usual political groups come out in support of or oppose the trade. The only opposition with real access to decision-makers is Gleason Golightly, a token Black conservative the president uses to give cover to the worst of his policies that harm African Americans. At a meeting of cabinet secretaries, no one seems swayed by Gleason’s argument that this trade is immoral. Talk instead focuses on how the trade would get African Americans off social safety net programs, end the failed American experiment to achieve racial equality, and allow African Americans—just African Americans—to sacrifice themselves for the good of the country. Passing a new military draft law (a new Selective Service Act) to force all African Americans to go with the traders will provide both legal and political cover.

Gleason warns that every time the country tries to sacrifice African Americans in the name of self-interest, it ends in disasters like the Civil War. The president and cabinet ignore him. The Secretary of the Interior goes beyond ignoring Gleason. He implies that African Americans aren’t up to the challenges of life in America; maybe life with the Space Traders is just what they need. This argument assumes African American inferiority, but Gleason can tell most people in the room are holding back laughter because they agree and enjoy his humiliation. The president, who is depending on Gleason’s support to make the trade happen, ends the group meeting with a warning to keep the deliberations secret.

Gleason sits at the table after the meeting thinking about what just happened. He had always been willing to make some compromises and take the heat as a racial sellout because he thought that doing so would allow him to do some good for specific African Americans and institutions behind the scenes. In this, he is like his hero Booker T. Washington. He now thinks he failed in his goal, however. His mistake was thinking that he was dealing with principled people. The Secretary of the Interior comes back and tells Gleason that if he will publicly support the plan, the Secretary of the Interior will arrange for Gleason, his family, and 100 other families to be allowed to stay.

Opposition to and support for the trade moves along predictable lines. An interracial liberal group proposes massive strikes and appeals to morality to stop the trade. Gleason asks to speak at their meeting, and despite their distrust of him, they give him some time. He tells them some plain truths: their plans are doomed because white people always sacrifice African Americans when it benefits white people. If they are smart, they will support the trade and argue that it will give great benefits to African Americans. As soon as white people think African Americans will get something white people won’t, support for the trade will erode.

Reverend Jasper, a charismatic African American minister, argues that this plan is immoral and uses insinuation to remind people of Gleason’s sellout reputation. His argument wins the day, and the group sings an African American spiritual (anti-slavery hymn “Amazing Grace”), so moved are they. Gleason is stunned at their lack of guile. Being tricksters has always been how the powerless survive the powerful, and none of these people have the political sense to recognize this reality.

The president gives a televised speech claiming that no decision has been made, but it is under consideration. No one is going to be singled out because of race, even though only African Americans would be traded. In addition, he argues that the country is in such bad shape that they must accept the deal. Finally, he all but tells the audience that the gains from the trade would mean a one-year tax holiday. Anyone listening knows this promise is a potential payoff that guarantees support for the deal.

Business interests don’t want the deal. African Americans make up too much of their market share to afford losing them as customers. Dirty energy industries know energy costs will shoot up before the system collapses, so they worry about losing possible profits. Everyone in their meeting (and they are all white men) knows having African Americans as scapegoats keeps economically oppressed white people from turning against the white elites benefiting from an unfair economic system; the country needs African Americans as scapegoats as a result.

The group decides to start a massive media campaign to appeal to people’s morality and emotions to get them to oppose the trade. When they threaten to withhold funding from the president’s campaign, he promises he will unleash populist rage against them, which will be easy to do since most white people want to be able to do damage to African Americans without having to own up to it.

White evangelical Christians use the Bible, promises of God-given prosperity, and a dramatization of African Americans (mostly played by white people in “black face” make-up [Page 386]) boarding the aliens’ ships to support the trade. Their shows raise white approval for the deal even higher. A constitutional convention to pass an amendment to require every African American person—no matter the age or ability—to be registered for the draft passes, and a referendum is scheduled to approve the amendment.

When Jewish groups mobilize around what looks like a repeat of the Nazi’s so-called final solution during the 1930s—genocide that resulted in the Holocaust—they swiftly face anti-Semitic threats, blacklisting, and violence that silences them. They go into hiding and scuttle plans to create havens for African Americans.

The racist tenor of the pro-trade campaign continues when pro-trade groups make overtly white nationalist arguments. The Founding Fathers meant for the U.S. to be a white country, and one only has to look at how they wrote slavery and inequality into the Constitution as proof. Some group or precedent is always sacrificed for the good of the country—men to wars, the original American system of government to end of the Civil War. Racial sacrifice is just a must in America. That argument manages to undercut every morality-based argument of the opposition.

News leaks out that the administration tried to modify the traders’ deal by sending only African American convicts; so many young African American men are incarcerated that this will be a large number. The traders reject this deal and tell the US it must stop the many middle-class African Americans who are fleeing the country. The president puts laws into place to stop them from leaving. All African American law enforcement officers and military are disarmed and furloughed.

A Supreme Court challenge to the law fails when the court concludes it does not have the standing to intervene in a political matter. Furthermore, since there was a law on the books because of the amendment, there really is no means for the Court to even address individuals’ suits. Finally, there are legal precedents for the law—the Korematsu case (1944), in which the court allowed the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes’s refusal to give legal relief to disenfranchised African American voters because strong opposition from white people would require the court to also require election oversight.

By January 14, the trade deal is almost complete. The government adds the provision that a thousand African American detainees will stay behind to look after African American property and goods placed in escrow in case African Americans came back. These thousand must agree to have their citizenship status suspended. No one selected for this service accepts it. The referendum on the constitutional amendment to draft all African Americans passes with a 70 to 30 margin.

Some African Americans manage to escape the country by then, but most die during their attempts, and the work of processing millions of African Americans for the trade begins. Golightly and his family had been promised safe passage to Canada rather than detainee status, but the Secretary of the Interior cancels that provision. When January 17 comes, the Space Traders strip their captives down to their undergarments, chain them together, and stick them into dark, crowded holds that feel and look just like the slave ships that had brought their ancestors to these shores.