Dark Matter

by Sheree R. Thomas

  “Good point, Madame Secretary,” the President answered, “but there are risks at every opportunity.”

  “I’ve never considered myself a particularly courageous individual, Mr. President.” That was the Secretary of the Interior, a man small in stature but with a mind both sharp and devious, who had presided over the logging of the last of the old-growth timber in the nation’s national forests. “But if I could guarantee prosperity for this great country by giving my life or going off with the Space Traders, I would do it without hesitation. And, if I would do it, I think every red-blooded American with an ounce of patriotism would as well.” The Secretary sat down to the warm applause of his colleagues.

  His suggestion kindled a thought in the Secretary of Defense. “Mr. President, the Secretary’s courage is not unlike that American men and women have exhibited when called to military service. Some go more willingly than others, but almost all go even with the knowledge that they may not come back. It is a call a country makes on the assumption that its citizens will respond. I think that is the situation we have here, except that instead of just young men and women, the country needs all of its citizens of African descent to step forward and serve.” More applause greeted this suggestion.

  The Attorney General asked for and got the floor. “Mr. President, I think we could put together a legislative package modeled on the Selective Service Act of 1918. Courts have uniformly upheld this statute and its predecessors as being well within congressional power to exact enforced military duty at home or abroad by United States citizens.2 While I don’t see any constitutional problems, there would likely be quite a debate in Congress. But if the mail they are receiving is anything like ours, then the pressure for passage will be irresistible.”

  The President and the cabinet members heard reports from agents who had checked out samples of the gold, chemicals, and machinery the Space Traders had brought. More tests would run in the next few days, but first indications were that the gold was genuine, and that the antipollution chemicals and the nuclear fuel machine were safe and worked. Everyone recognized that the benefits of the country would be enormous. The ability to erase the country’s debt alone would ease the economic chaos the Federal Reserve had staved off during the last few years only by its drastic—the opposition party called it “unscrupulous”—manipulation of the money supply. The Secretary of the Treasury confirmed that the Space Traders’ gold would solve the nation’s economic problems for decades to come.

  “What are your thoughts on all this, Professor Golightly?” asked the President, nodding at the scholarly-looking black man sitting far down the table. The President realized that there would be a lot more opposition to a selective service plan among ordinary citizens than among the members of his cabinet, and hoped Golightly would have some ideas for getting around it.

  Golightly began as though he understood the kind of answer the President wanted.

  “As you know, Mr. President, I have supported this administration’s policies that have led to the repeal of some civil rights laws, to invalidation of most affirmative action programs, and to severe reduction in appropriations for public assistance. To put it mildly, the positions of mine that have received a great deal of media attention, have not been well received in African American communities. Even so, I have been willing to be a ‘good soldier’ for the Party even though I am condemned as an Uncle Tom by my people. I sincerely believe that black people needed to stand up on their own feet, free of special protection provided by civil rights laws, the suffocating burden of welfare checks, and the stigmatizing influence of affirmative action programs. In helping you undermine these policies, I realized that your reasons for doing so differed from mine. And yet I went along.”

  Golightly stopped. He reached down for his coffee mug, took a few sips, and ran his fingers through his graying but relatively straight (what some black people call “good”) hair. “Mr. President, my record of support entitles me to be heard on the Space Traders’ proposition. I disagree strongly with both the Secretary of the Interior and the Attorney General. What they are proposing is not universal selective service for blacks. It is group banishment, a most severe penalty and one that the Attorney General would impose without benefit of either due process or judicial review.

  “It is a mark of just how far out of the mainstream black people are that this proposition is given any serious consideration. Were the Space Traders attracted by and asking to trade any other group—white women with red hair and green eyes, for example—a horrified public would order the visitors off the planet without a moment’s hesitation. The revulsion would not be less because the number of persons with those physical characteristics are surely fewer than the twenty million black citizens you are ready to condemn to intergalactic exile.

  “Mr. President, I cannot be objective on this proposal. I will match my patriotism, including readiness to give my life for my country, with that of the Secretary of the Interior. But my duty stops short of condemning my wife, my three children, my grandchildren, and my aged mother to an unknown fate. You simply cannot condemn twenty million people because they are black, and thus fit fodder for trade, so that this country can pay its debts, protect its environment, and ensure its energy supply. I am not ready to recommend such a sacrifice. Moreover, I doubt whether the Secretary of the Interior would willingly offer up his family and friends if the Space Traders sought them instead of me and mine.” He paused.

  “Professor Golightly,” the Secretary of the Interior said, leaning forward, “the President asked you a specific question. This is not the time to debate which of us is the more patriotic or to engage in the details of the sacrifice that is a necessary component of any service for one’s country.”

  Golightly chose to ignore the interruption. He knew, and the President knew, that his support—or, at least, his silent acquiescence—would be critical in winning undecided whites over to the selective service scheme. For their purposes, the President’s media people had made Golightly an important voice on racial policy issues. They needed him now as never before.

  “Mr. President,” he continued, “you and your cabinet must place this offer in historical perspective. This is far from the first time this country’s leaders have considered and rejected the removal of all those here of African descent. Benjamin Franklin and other abolitionists actively sought schemes to free the slaves and return them to their homeland. Lincoln examined and supported emigration programs both before and after he freed the slaves. Even those Radical Republicans who drafted the Civil War amendments wondered whether Africans could ever become a part of the national scene, a part of the American people.

  “As early as 1866, Michigan’s Senator Jacob Merrit Howard, an abolitionist and key architect of the Fourteenth Amendment, recognized the nation’s need to confront the challenge posed by the presence of the former slaves, and spoke out on it, saying:

  “For weal or for woe, the destiny of the colored race in this country is wrapped up with our own; they are to remain in our midst, and here spend their years and here bury their fathers and finally repose themselves. We may regret it. It may not be entirely compatible with our taste that they should live in our midst. We cannot help it. Our forefathers introduced them, and their destiny is to continue among us; and the practical question which now presents itself to us is as to the best mode of getting along with them.3

  “Now, Mr. President, after receiving your invitation to this meeting, I had no difficulty in guessing its agenda or predicting how many of you might come down in favor of accepting the Space Traders’ offer, and so looked up Senator Howard’s speech. I have prepared copies of it for each of you. I recommend you study it.”

  Golightly walked around the large table to give each cabinet member a copy of the speech. As he did so, he pointed out, “The Senator’s words are grudging rather than generous, conciliatory rather than crusading. He proposed sanctuary rather than equality for blacks. And though there have been periods in which the
ir striving for full equality seems to have brought them close to their goal, sanctuary remains the more accurate description of black citizenship.”

  Returning to his place, Golightly continued. “This status has provided this nation an essential stability, one you sacrifice at your peril. With all due respect, Mr. President, acceptance of the Space Traders’ solution will not bring a century of prosperity to this country. Secretary Hipmeyer is correct. What today seems to you a solution from Heaven will instead herald a decade of shame and dissension mirroring the moral conflicts that precipitated this nation into its most bloody conflict, the Civil War. The deep, self-inflicted wounds of that era have never really healed. Their reopening will inevitably lead to confrontations and strife that could cause the eventual dissolution of the nation.”

  “You seem to assume, Professor Golightly,” the Secretary of the Interior interrupted again, “that the Space Traders want African Americans for some heinous purpose. Why do you ignore alternative scenarios? They are obviously aware of your people’s plight here. Perhaps they have selected them to inhabit an interplanetary version of the biblical land of milk and honey. Or, more seriously,” the Secretary said, “they may offer your people a new start in a less competitive environment, or”—he added, with slight smirk in the President’s direction—“perhaps they are going to give your people that training in skills and work discipline you’re always urging on them.”

  No one actually laughed, but all except Golightly thought the Secretary’s comment an excellent response to the black professor’s gloomy predictions.

  “I think we get your point, Professor,” the President replied smoothly, concerned not to alienate a man whose support he would need. “We will give it weight in our considerations. Now,” he said, rising, “we need to get to work on this thing. We don’t have much time.” He asked the Attorney General to draw up a rough draft of the proposed legislation by the end of the day, and told the rest of his cabinet that his aides would shortly be bringing them specific assignments. “Now let’s all of us be sure to keep to ourselves what was said at this meeting”—and he glanced meaningfully at Professor Golightly. “Well, that’s it for now, people. Meeting adjourned.”

  Long after the others had departed, Gleason Golightly sat at the long conference table. His hands were folded. He stared at the wall. He had always prided himself as the “man on the inside.” While speaking in support of conservative policies, those were—he knew—policies that commanded enough support to be carried out. As a black man, his support legitimated those policies and salved the consciences of the whites who proposed and implemented them. A small price to pay, Golightly had always rationalized, for the many behind-the-scenes favors he received. The favors were not for himself. Golightly, a full professor at a small but well-endowed college, neither wanted nor needed what he called “blood money.” Rather, he saw that black colleges got much-needed funding; and through his efforts, certain black officials received appointments or key promotions. He smiled wryly when some of these officials criticized his conservative positions and called him “Uncle Tom.” He could bear that, knowing he made a contribution few others were able—or willing—to make to the racial cause.

  Booker T. Washington was his hero and had been since he was a child growing up in a middle-class family in Alabama, not far from Tuskegee, the home of Tuskegee Institute, which Washington had founded in 1881. He had modeled his career on old Booker T., and while he did not have a following and had created no institutions, Golightly knew he had done more for black people than had a dozen of the loud-mouthed leaders who, he felt, talked much and produced little. But all of his life, he had dreamed of there coming a moment when his position as an insider would enable him to perform some heroic act to both save his people great grief and gain for him the recognition and the love for which, despite his frequent denials, he knew he yearned.

  Now, as he sat alone, he feared that this morning’s meeting was that big chance, and he had failed it. The stakes, of course, were larger than he would ever have imagined they might be, and yet he thought he’d had the arguments. In retrospect, though, those arguments were based on morality and assumed a willingness on the part of the President and the cabinet to be fair, or at least to balance the benefits of the Trade against the sacrifice it would require of a selected portion of the American people. Instead of outsmarting them, Golightly had done what he so frequently criticized civil rights spokespersons for doing: he had tried to get whites to do right by black people because it was right that they do so. “Crazy!” he commented when civil rights people did it. “Crazy!” he mumbled to himself, at himself.

  “Oh, Golightly, glad you’re still here. I want a word with you.” Golightly looked up as the Secretary of the Interior, at his most unctuous, eased himself into the seat beside him.

  “Listen, old man, sorry about our differences at the meeting. I understand your concerns.”

  Golightly did not look at the man and, indeed, kept his eyes on the wall throughout the conversation. “What do you want, Mr. Secretary?”

  The Secretary ignored Golightly’s coldness. “You could tell in the meeting and from the media reports that this Trade thing is big, very big. There will be debate—as there should be in a great, free country like ours. But if I were a betting man, which I am not because of my religious beliefs, I would wager that this offer will be approved.”

  “I assume, Mr. Secretary, that to further the best interests of this great, free country of ours, you will be praying that the Trade is approved.” Golightly’s voice deepened ironically on the crucial words.

  The Secretary’s smile faded, and his eyes narrowed. “The President wants you to say whatever you can in favor of this plan.”

  “Why don’t we simply follow your suggestion, Mr. Secretary, and tell everyone that the Space Traders are going to take the blacks to a land of milk and honey?”

  The Secretary’s voice hardened. “I don’t think even black people are that stupid. No, Gleason, talk about patriotism, about the readiness of black people to make sacrifices for this country, about how they are really worthy citizens no matter what some may think. We’ll leave the wording to you. Isn’t sacrifice as proof of patriotism what your Frederick Douglass argued to get President Lincoln to open up the Union army to black enlistees?”

  “And then?” Golightly asked, his eyes never moving from the wall.

  “We know some blacks will escape. I understand some are leaving the country already. But”—and the Secretary’s voice was smooth as butter—“if you go along with the program, Gleason, and the Trade is approved, the President says he’ll see to it that one hundred black families are smuggled out of the country. You decide who they are. They’ll include you and yours, of course.”

  Golightly said nothing.

  After a moment of hesitation, the Secretary got up and strode to the door. Before leaving, he turned and said, “Think about it, Golightly. It’s the kind of deal we think you should go for.”

  3 January. The Anti-Trade Coalition—a gathering of black and liberal white politicians, civil rights representatives, and progressive academics—quickly assembled early that morning. Working nonstop and driven by anxiety to cooperate more than they ever had in the past, the members of the coalition had drafted a series of legal and political steps designed to organize opposition to the Space Traders’ offer. Constitutional challenges to any acceptance scheme were high on the list of opposition strategies. Bills opposing the Trade were drafted for early introduction in Congress. There were plans for direct action protests and boycotts. Finally, in the event that worse came to worst, and the administration decided to carry out what gathering participants were calling the “African-American kidnapping plot,” a secret committee was selected to draft and distribute plans for massive disobedience.

  Now, at close to midnight, the plenary session was ready to give final approval to this broad program of resistance.

  At that moment, Professor Gleason Golightly sough
t the floor to propose an alternative response to the Trade offer. Golightly’s close connection to the conservative administrations and active support of its anti-black views made him far from a hero to most blacks. Many viewed his appearance at this critical hour as an administration-sponsored effort to undermine the coalition’s defensive plans and tactics. At last, though, he prevailed on the conference leaders to grant him five minutes.

  As he moved toward the podium, there was a wave of hostile murmuring whose justification Golightly acknowledged: “I am well aware that political and ideological differences have for several years sustained a wide chasm between us. But the events of two days ago have transformed our disputes into a painful reminder of our shared status. I am here because, whatever our ideological differences or our socioeconomic positions, we all know that black rights, black interests, black property, even black lives are expendable whenever their sacrifice will further or sustain white needs or preferences.”

  Hearing Golightly admitting to truths he had long denied, served to silence the murmuring. “It has become an unwritten tradition in this country for whites to sacrifice our rights to further their own interests. This tradition overshadows the national debate about the Space Traders’ offer and may well foretell our reply to it.”

  Oblivious of the whites in the audience, Golightly said, “I realize that our liberal white friends continue to reassure us. ‘This is America,’ they tell us. ‘It can’t happen here.’ But I’ve noticed that those whites who are most vigorous in their assurances are least able to rebut the contrary teaching of both historic fact and present reality. Outside civil rights gatherings like this, the masses of black people—those you claim to represent but to whom you seldom listen—are mostly resigned to the nation’s acceptance of the Space Traders’ offer. For them, liberal optimism is smothered by their life experience.