Dark Matter

by Sheree R. Thomas

  The Space Traders were, according to the televised “Gospel,” bringing America blessings earned by their listeners’ and viewers’ faithful dedication to freedom, liberty, and God’s word. Not only would rejection of these blessings from space be wrong, so the preachers exhorted; it would be blasphemous. It was God’s will that all Americans enjoy a tax-free year, a cleaned-up environment for years to come, and cheap heating forever. True, a sacrifice was required if they were to obtain God’s bounty—a painful sacrifice. But here, too, God was testing Americans, his chosen people, to ensure that they were worthy of His bounty, deserving of His love. Each preacher drew on Scripture, tortuously interpreted, to support these statements.

  A “ministry of music” quartet—four of the most popular television evangelists, all speaking in careful cadences like a white rap group—preached the major sermon. It whipped the crowd into a delirium of religious feeling, making them receptive both to the financial appeals, which raised millions, and to the rally’s grande finale: a somber tableau of black people marching stoically into the Space Traders’ ships, which here resembled ancient sacrificial altars. Try as they might, the producers of the pageant had had a hard time finding black people willing to act out roles they might soon be forced to experience, but a few blacks were glad to be paid handsomely for walking silently across the stage. These few were easily supplemented by the many whites eager to daub on “black face.”

  The rally was a great success despite the all-out efforts of the media to condemn this “sacrilege of all that is truly holy.” That night, millions of messages, all urging acceptance of the Space Traders’ offer, deluged the President and Congress.

  7 January. Groups supporting the Space Traders’ proposition had from the beginning taken seriously blacks’ charges that acceptance of it would violate the Constitution’s most basic protections. Acting swiftly, and with the full cooperation of the states, they had set in motion the steps necessary to convene a constitutional convention in Philadelphia. (“Of course!” groaned Golightly when he heard of it.) And there, on this day, on the site of the original constitutional convention, delegates chosen, in accordance with Article V of the Constitution, by the state legislatures, quickly drafted, and by a substantial majority passed, the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. It declared:

  Without regard to the language or interpretations previously given any other provision of this document, every United States citizen is subject at the call of Congress to selection for special service for periods necessary to protect domestic interests and international needs.

  The amendment was scheduled for ratification by the states on 15 January in a national referendum. If ratified, the amendment would validate amendments to existing Selective Service laws authorizing the induction of all blacks into special service for transportation under the terms of the Space Traders’ offer.

  8 January. Led by Rabbi Abraham Specter, a group of Jewish church and organizational leaders sponsored a mammoth anti-Trade rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden. “We simply cannot stand by and allow America’s version of the Final Solution to its race problem to be carried out without our strong protest and committed opposition.” Thirty-five thousand Jews signed pledges to disrupt by all possible nonviolent means both the referendum and—if the amendment was ratified—the selection of blacks for “special service.”

  “Already,” Rabbi Specter announced, “a secret Anne Frank Committee has formed, and its hundreds of members have begun to locate hiding places in out-of-the-way sites across this great country. Blacks by the thousands can be hidden for years if necessary until the nation returns to its senses.

  “We vow this action because we recognize the fateful parallel between the plight of the blacks in this country and the situation of the Jews in Nazi Germany. Holocaust scholars agree that the Final Solution in Germany would not have been possible without the pervasive presence and the uninterrupted tradition of anti-Semitism in Germany. We must not let the Space Traders be the final solution for blacks in America.”

  A concern of many Jews not contained in their official condemnations of the Trade offer, was that, in the absence of blacks, Jews could become the scapegoats for a system so reliant on an identifiable group on whose heads less-well-off whites can discharge their hate and frustrations for societal disabilities about which they are unwilling to confront their leaders. Given the German experience, few Jews argued that “it couldn’t happen here.”6

  9 January. Responding almost immediately to the Jewish anti-Trade rally, the Attorney General expressed his “grave concern” that what he felt certain was but a small group of Jews would, by acting in flagrant violation of the law of the land, besmirch the good names of all patriotic American Jews. For this reason, he said, he was releasing for publication the secret list, obtained by undercover FBI agents, of all those who had joined the Anne Frank Committee. He stated that the release was needed so that all Americans could easily distinguish this group from the majority of patriotic and law-abiding Jewish citizens.

  Retaliation was quick. Within hours, men and women listed as belonging to the committee lost their jobs; their contracts were canceled; their mortgages foreclosed; and harassment of them, including physical violence, escalated into a nationwide resurgence of anti-Semitic feeling. Groups on the far right, who were exploiting the growing support for the Trade, urged: “Send the blacks into space. Send the Jews into Hell.” The Jews who opposed the Trade were intimidated into silence and inaction. The leaders of Rabbi Specter’s group were themselves forced into hiding, leaving few able to provide any haven for blacks.

  10 January. In the brief but intense pre-election day campaign, the pro-ratification groups’ major argument had an appeal that surprised even those who made it. Their message was straightforward:

  The Framers intended America to be a white country. The evidence of their intentions is present in the original Constitution. After more than a hundred and thirty-seven years of good-faith efforts to build a healthy, stable interracial nation, we have concluded—as the Framers did in the beginning—that our survival today requires that we sacrifice the rights of blacks in order to protect and further the interests of whites. The Framers’ example must be our guide. Patriotism, and not pity, must govern our decision. We should ratify the amendment and accept the Space Traders’ proposition.

  In response, a coalition of liberal opponents to the Space Traders’ offer sought to combine pragmatism and principle in what they called their “slippery Trade slope” argument. First, they proclaimed the strong moral position that trading away a group of Americans identifiable by race is wrong and violates our basic principles. The coalition aimed its major thrust, however, at the self-interest of white Americans: “Does not consigning blacks to an unknown fate set a dangerous precedent?” the liberals demanded. “Who will be next?”

  In full-page ads, they pressed the point: “Are we cannibals ready to consume our own for profit? And if we are, the blacks may be only the first. If the Space Traders return with an irresistible offer for another group, the precedent will have been set, and none of us will be safe. Certainly not the minorities—Hispanics, Jews, Asians—and perhaps not even those of us identifiable by politics or religion or geographic location. Setting such a precedent of profit could consume us all.”

  Astutely sidestepping the Trade precedent arguments, the pro-Trade response focused on the past sacrifices of blacks. “In each instance,” it went, “the sacrifice of black rights was absolutely necessary to accomplish an important government purpose. These decisions were neither arbitrary nor capricious. Without the compromises on slavery in the Constitution of 1787, there would be no America. Nor would there be any framework under which those opposed to slavery could continue the struggle that eventually led to the Civil War and emancipation.

  “And where and how might slavery have ended had a new government not been formed? On what foundation would the post–Civil War amendments been append
ed? Sacrifices by blacks were made, but those sacrifices were both necessary and eventually rewarding to blacks as well as the nation.”

  In countering the anti-Trade contention that the sacrifice of black rights was both evil and unprecedented, pro-Traders claimed, “Beginning with the Civil War in which black people gained their liberty, this nation has called on its people to serve in its defense. Many men and women have voluntarily enlisted in the armed services, but literally millions of men have been conscripted, required to serve their country, and, if necessary, to sacrifice not simply their rights but also their lives.”

  As for the argument that the sacrifice of black rights in political compromises was odious racial discrimination, pro-Trade forces contended that “fortuitous fate and not blatant racism” should be held responsible. Just as men and not women are inducted into the military, and even then only men of a certain age and physical and mental condition, so only some groups are destined by their role in the nation’s history to serve as catalyst for stability and progress.

  “All Americans are expected to make sacrifices for the good of their country. Black people are no exceptions to this basic obligation of citizenship. Their role may be special, but so is that of many of those who serve. The role that blacks may be called on to play in response to the Space Traders’ offer is, however regrettable, neither immoral nor unconstitutional.”

  A tremendous groundswell of public agreement with the pro-Trade position drowned out anti-Trade complaints of unfairness. Powerful as would have been the notion of seeing the Space Traders’ offer as no more than a fortuitous circumstance, in which blacks might be called on to sacrifice for their country, the “racial sacrifice as historic necessity” argument made the pro-Trade position irresistible to millions of voters—and to their Congressional representatives.

  11 January. Unconfirmed media reports asserted that U.S. officials tried in secret negotiations to get the Space Traders to take in trade only those blacks currently under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system—that is, in prison or on parole or probation. Government negotiators noted that this would include almost one half of the black males in the twenty- to twenty-nine-year-old age bracket.* Negotiators were also reported to have offered to trade only blacks locked in the inner cities. But the Space Traders stated that they had no intention of turning their far-off homeland into an American prison colony for blacks. In rejecting the American offer, the Space Traders warned that they would withdraw their proposition unless the United States halted the flight of the growing numbers of middle-class blacks who—fearing the worst—were fleeing the country.

  In response, executive orders were issued and implemented, barring blacks from leaving the country until the Space Traders’ proposition was fully debated and resolved. “It is your patriotic duty,” blacks were told by the White House, “to allow this great issue to be resolved through the democratic process and in accordance with the rule of law.” To ensure that the Trade debate and referendum were concluded in a “noncoercive environment,” all blacks serving in the military were placed on furlough and relieved of their weapons. State officials took similar action with respect to blacks on active duty in state and local police forces.

  12 January. The Supreme Court, citing precedent dating back to 1849, rejected a number of appeals by blacks and their white supporters whose legal challenges to every aspect of the referendum process had been dismissed by lower courts as “political questions” best resolved by the body politic rather than through judicial review.9

  The Supreme Court’s order refusing to intervene in the Space Trader proposition was unanimous. The order was brief and per curiam, the Court agreeing that the Space Trader litigation lacked judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving the issues.10 The Court also noted that, if inducted in accordance with a constitutionally approved conscription provision, blacks would have no issues of individual rights for review. Even if the Court were to conclude that rights under the Fourteenth Amendment were deserving of greater weight than the authority of the new constitutional amendment up for ratification, the standards of national necessity that prompted the Court to approve the confinement of Japanese Americans during the Second World War,11 would serve as sufficient precedent for the induction and transfer of African Americans to the Space Traders.

  While not claiming to give weight to the public opinion polls reporting strong support for the Trade, the Court noted that almost a century earlier, in 1903, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes had denied injunctive relief to six thousand blacks who petitioned the Court to protect their right to vote.12 The bill alleged that the great mass of the white population intended to keep the blacks from voting; but, in view of such massive opposition, Holmes reasoned that ordering the blacks’ names to be placed on the voting list would be “an empty form” unless the Court also mandated electoral supervision by “officers of the court.”*

  14 January. With the legal questions of the Trade the U.S. government announced that as a result of negotiations with the Space Trader leaders, the latter had agreed to amend their offer and exclude from the Trade all black people seventy years old, and older, and all those blacks who were seriously handicapped, ill, and injured. In addition, a thousand otherwise-eligible blacks and their immediate families would be left behind as trustees of black property and possessions, all of which would be stored or held in escrow in case blacks were returned to this country. Each of the thousand black “detainees” was required to pledge to accept a subordinate status with “suspended citizenship” until such time as the “special service inductees” were returned to the country. The administration selected blacks to remain who had records of loyalty to the conservative party and no recorded instances of militant activity. Even so, many of those blacks selected declined to remain. “We will, like the others,” said one black who rejected detainee status, “take our chances with the referendum.”

  15 January. Many whites had, to their credit, been working day and night to defeat the amendment; but, as is the usual fate of minority rights when subjected to referenda or initiatives,14 the outcome was never really in doubt. The final vote rally confirmed the predictions. By 70 percent to 30 percent, American citizens voted to ratify the constitutional amendment that provided a legal basis for acceptance of the Space Traders’ offer. In anticipation of this result, government agencies had secretly made preparations to facilitate the transfer. Some blacks escaped, and many thousands lost their lives in futile efforts to resist the joint federal and state police teams responsible for rounding up, cataloguing, and transporting blacks to the coast.

  16 January. Professor Golightly and his family were not granted detainee status. Instead, the White House promised safe passage to Canada for all his past services even though he had not made the patriotic appeal the President had requested of him. But, at the border that evening, he was stopped and turned back. It turned out the Secretary of the Interior had called to countermand his departure. Golightly was not surprised. What really distressed him was his failure to convince the black leaders of the anti-Trade coalition to heed their own rhetoric: namely that whites in power would, given the chance, do to privileged blacks what, in fact, they had done to all blacks.

  “I wonder,” he murmured, half to himself, half to his wife, as they rode in a luxury limousine sent, in some irony, by the Secretary of the Interior to convey them to the nearest roundup point, “how my high-minded brothers at the conference feel now about their decision to fail with integrity rather than stoop to the bit of trickery that might have saved them.”

  “But, Gleason,” his wife asked, “would our lives have really been better had we fooled the country into voting against the Trade? If the Space Traders were to depart, carrying away with them what they and everyone else says can solve our major domestic problems, wouldn’t people increasingly blame us blacks for increases in debt, pollution, and fuel shortages? We might have saved ourselves—but only to face here a fate as dire as any we face in spac
e.”

  “I hope your stoic outlook helps us through whatever lies ahead,” Golightly responded as the car stopped. Then guards hustled him and his family toward the buses being loaded with other blacks captured at the Canadian border.

  17 January. The last Martin Luther King holiday the nation would ever observe dawned on an extraordinary sight. In the night, the Space Traders had drawn their strange ships right up to the beaches and discharged their cargoes of gold, minerals, and machinery, leaving vast empty holds. Crowded on the beaches were the inductees, some twenty million silent black men, women, and children, including babes in arms. As the sun rose, the Space Traders directed them, first, to strip off all but a single undergarment; then, to line up; and finally, to enter those holds which yawned in the morning light like Milton’s “darkness visible.” The inductees looked fearfully behind them. But, on the dunes above the beaches, guns at the ready, stood U.S. guards. There was no escape, no alternative. Heads bowed, arms now linked by slender chains, black people left the New World as their forebears had arrived.

  THE PRETENDED

  Darryl A. Smith

  (2000)

  They’d embalmed the trains with the condemned and the pretended.

  The naked, shuffling brown slush of bodies and momentum had been drawn as if through suction and the further benefaction of pumping into the suckled boxcars whose nooks had been tickled the night prior by whispers of early snow.

  But the day had come to graze on light. The sky was so clear and pale that the moon had needed to climb high through the banishing twilight in order to distinguish its grin against sufficient blue.

  Curiously, the boxcars hadn’t seemed to fill at first. Not even a little bit. The slush seemed but a vast, obedient pupilage of shadows matriculating into nothingness.