Heirs to genocide: a thought experiment

[ceri]

I am tempted to write an alternate history in which all sufficiently white people of, hmm, maybe 1800-1850, or around World War I, are whisked off to a humanity-free world, and then deal with their society's collapse. I'd a MacGuffin of some kind to justify the piecemeal shifting. Purity-obsessed aliens liberating what they regard as the dominant society? The Taiping Emperor is right, and when Jesus returns to establish the new celestial kingdom, He's bored of white people? Maybe it doesn't need an immediate answer given well-defined effects.

I sort of feel in the mood to write a horror story about the death of a civilization, and what prospects there may be for better in its wake.

Comments

[snugglebitch]

Why just the white people?

[ceri]

Petty revenge thoughts occasioned by the discussion of Pat Wrede's new novel, and in general by casual dismissals of people of color.

[snugglebitch]

Gotcha. I think I misread the first post, and thought it was gonna be from the point of view of the people who got swept away to the alien planet (in which case you're back to the same exact problem as Thirteenth Child and its ilk).

Also, can I just say I wish I was surprised by all this bullshit in genre fic?

[ceri]

Actually, my thought was indeed to write about a white society set free, as it imagines, from the entanglement of other races, only to find that it was dependent on them, and its fall.

[snugglebitch]

Okay, so maybe I'm over-thinking this (but I studied writing for four years, so it's in my nature to over-think this stuff). And obviously, this is based on barely two sentences of plot description, so if I'm way off base, you can tell me to go away.

But I can't help but feel like there's still a (unintentional, I'm sure) problematic message in this. The underlying theme seems to be that people of color have worth because white people would be unable to survive without them, but really, people of color have worth because they're people. It still hinges the worth of people of color to white people, when the point of all this (especially related to Lois Bujold's latest comments) is that people of color have worth independent of whatever's going on in white society (despite the fact that white society and people seem determined to rob them of it).

[ceri]

That doesn't strike me as overthinking - it sounds like a point I needed to hear, really.

[keeva]

WHY DO YOU HATE WHITE PEOPLE

[ceri]

Self-loathing is more fun when shared! Like a big box of popcorn, or the clap.