 into the Bradbury story. She sees it as showing “the way in which the whites define their existence through the lives of the blacks.”
One might suspect that the whites should be happy to see Blacks leave America, she concludes, but they are not. “One might imagine that a racist white would be glad to see the blacks leave the world, “ she wrote, “but racism depends on the presence of those it hates. He and his fellow whites depend upon the blacks not just economically but also as a way to identify themselves by what they are not.”
Indeed without “a black presence, Teece has very little left of himself.“ Without Obama and Bolden, whites wouldn’t be able to celebrate the great achievement.
To reiterate, Bradbury is writing not just about the imagined future, but also about the our present situation. Blacks don’t get the credit they deserve, but the attention of the public is directed to a white guy in a mohawk.
In a way, Blacks did get to Mars. We just didn’t notice it.