Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism

In this piece, an island rises off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. Even from far away, it is obvious that this mysterious land is beautiful and loaded with resources, so many nations, including the US, send explorers to claim the land. The land is so hostile to life that it kills off every explorer with the exception of one, an explorer who is the descendent of enslaved African Americans.

The successful landing of an all-African American crew confirms this reality and kicks off a round of debate, one that has its historical roots in arguments about the future of African Americans from pre-Revolutionary days. Remembering the ideal of “a promised land” so prevalent in African American culture since the days of slavery, some African Americans argue that this land—Afroatlantica (after the fabled Atlantis) must be the fulfillment of that promise; African Americans en masse should leave behind the United States as a failed experiment in integration and equality. Black nationalists are among this group. White Americans, glad at last to see a way out of repairing the harms of slavery, encourage emigration by promising a subsidy to be paid only if African Americans leave and stay gone.