It is the mistake of ignoring or not-knowing what happened to that Cold War-dispersed virulent white supremacy, or the police-dispersed Black Arts/Power activists who birthed a new Humanities curriculum. Because the Obama-led progress collapsed so precipitously and traumatically for many undocumented people, victims of US drone strikes and police brutality, and believers in “Change,” Progress(ives) should now admit their terrible mistake. That’s the Cold War narrative, a moral arc ever-progressing toward a post-racial miracle that culminated in the election of Barack Hussein Obama. We, the People, are One nation, under God. That triumph set us on the footpath toward some future equality – in due time and all deliberate speed. Progress, we know too well from the standardized and simplistic textbook narratives, let America “triumph” over its racial demons. The irony of this viewpoint is that it represents “progress” and, indubitably, a terrible mistake. King’s and Rosa Parks’ nonviolence, and occasionally Malcolm X’s militancy – seldom from the perspective of those who, today, champion the “Lost Cause” memorialized by Confederate monuments. Typically, when we reflect on how 1960s activists eyed the prize of racial equality, it is from the perspective of Dr. (Cmdr.) Tuvok, a black-skinned Vulcan.ĬOINTELPRO 101: The New, Warped Humanities This near-future, dystopian-horror reality directly relates to my current concern: the 1950s/1960s cultural revolution and the cultural backlash, as seen through Gene Roddenberry’s original multicultural Star Trek crew and Star Trek: Voyager’s treatment of Lt. The result? A real-time, realpolitik rewriting of the master narrative, either through Exceptional(ists)’s always-cinematic bravado with its heroes and heroines of a thousand faces, or Progress(ives)’s Orwellian doublethink, their pro-democracy effusions and bemoaning of the-other-elites continually missing the point painfully felt by minorities and the poor. interests,” revealing “hidden” but “crucial principles,” and dramatically affecting the “major genres.” 1 Exceptional(ists) and Progress(ives) doubled down on the challenged master narrative, when 1954 desegregation and the 1960s Black Arts Movement ushered in a revolutionary new Humanities and, now, when the Obama-vs.-Trump presidencies opened the racial Pandora’s box.
Geopolitical crises are “social dramas,” argues noted anthropologist Victor Turner, that shift the social fabric, temporarily aligning “mutual. The crisis responses by Exceptional(ists) and Progress(ives) are distinct and yet complementary. For America-is-Progress(ives): Reality contorts, constituting a mix of “progress,” nostalgic backlash, and powerful hegemonic interests quietly engineering new methods of retrogression. For America-is-Exceptional(ists): Not only did Obama wreak “carnage” or Trump’s approval rating reach historic lows, but the US’s fall in global opinion polls and status as a “backsliding democracy” indicate real-time damage to its brand. Focus on the apparent deepening of the traditional liberal-vs.-conservative, integration-vs.-segregation divides distorts reality because, at the same time, liberal/Democrat and conservative/Republican geopolitical interests align in one camp with two tents: America’s Exceptionalists and Progressives. As the turmoil following 1954’s Brown decision and the Obama and Trump administrations indicates, the appearance of domestic progress is part of a broader warped binary that lurks just beyond direct public discourse.
evil-USSR-communism binary: Along with the threat of World War III (supercharged by global warming and spiced by pandemics), civil rights progress in a Cold War context unleashes a powerful realpolitik that warps the perceived status quo. Given the era of Trump and the abyss dividing the nation, a new chapter has begun that threatens to makes patent the real lesson latent in the simple, good-US-democracy vs. With the arrival in the 1950s of the Cold War-blessed Civil Rights Movement and the high-profile, globally embarrassing footage of dogs, water hoses, police batons, and white police officers riding their chargers into protestors, the era of unapologetically public and violent white supremacy had reached its conclusion.
Commander Tuvok by season 4, joins a long history as the “first” black Vulcan to be featured in a major ST role. Tuvok (portrayed by Tim Russ), officially Lt. Star Trek: Voyager and its lone “black” character, the Vulcan Lt. If Deep Space 9 demonstrates how the casting of African American commanders in chief – and their election – may constitute or create a backlash disguised as “progress,” it has implications for other mass-mediated expressions of the heroic fantasy and sci-fi genre, and the ST universe.
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