Is Science-Fiction Racist?
I was reading an article by Gregory Rutledge entitled, “Futuristic Fiction & Fantasy: The Racial Establishment” and came across this quote by Richard Pryor:
“I don’t like movies when they don’t have no niggers in ‘em. I went to see, I went to see “Logan’s Run,” right. They had a movie of the future called “Logan’s Run.” Ain’t no niggers in it. I said, well while folks ain’t planning for us to be here. That’s why we gotta make movies. Then we[‘ll] be in the pictures.” - Richard Pryor in “Black Hollywood” from Richard Pryor: Bicentennial Nigger (1976).
I have been a life-long fan of science-fiction my whole life and yet Richard Pryor’s words ring true. There’s an absence of Black folks in this genre. But it goes beyond an absence to a deliberate removal, a method of writing reality in such that Black folks never existed or will exist. Even now, re-reading a book I enjoyed as a child, I am struck with the tacit hostility towards blackness in the book and in this genre as whole. But on the lighter side, I am reminded by Lewis C. K. as to how and why this would come about [my apologies for the language in advance]:
