ABSTRACT
Afrofuturism can be seen as a necessary antidote, a lifesaving response, to the poison that is the exploitation of life and history of Blackness and Black existence in the Old and New worlds. It represents a sustained stand against the continuing onslaught against Black life. The dispiriting statistics on Black mortality, racial pay gaps, wealth inequality, judicial inequalities, narratives of “Living while Black” do not help the people who bear the burden of these injustices, other than to highlight the rate of deliberate introduction of toxins defined by race and racism and to hopefully prepare them for response. The statistics make it feel there is little change to the status quo, and when Whiteness incorporates the language of Black Resistance to its own end, patterns of resistance feel old and tired. The new and increasingly politically important Identitarian Movements are nothing but a new version of a displacing theme where the powerful place their grievances at a par with all supplicants to undermine any type of demanded change. The dominant containment strategy is a call for stasis, and where possible, a return to a golden age when power was vested in a parochial mainstream. One intention of the new Identitarian is to keep the future frozen to their benefit, Afrofuturism demands a different future.
