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it, how do you know when you’ve achieved it?
    The ideal society that the nameless many have fought and died for is a world that many can’t imagine. Even those who live the dreams of their predecessors wrestle with leaving familiar notions of identity behind and imagining something new. “There’s something about racism that has produced a fatalism that has impacted futuristic thinking,” says professor and author Alondra Nelson. While statements like “We don’t know what tomorrow will bring” and “The future is not promised” are often said under the guise of well-meaning advice, they have a deeper reach into black diaspora culture, says Nelson. They’re countered by the concept of prophecy, she says, or speaking about hope to create a vision for the future. “It’s about future thinking, sustainability and imagination.”
    The imagination is powerful. The narrative of hope that spews from change agents working for social equality is no accident. Dr. Martin Luther King, Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., even President Barack Obama centered their missions and speeches on hope. On the surface, hope rings as very altruistic—something simple that anyone can do if they just reshuffle their thinking caps or wish upon a star. But the results of a changed mind backed by a bit of empowerment can turn a conflicted world on its head.
    Hope, much like imagination, comes at a premium. The cost is a life where more is expected. Where more is expected, new actions are required. The audacity of hope, the bold declaration to believe, and clarity of vision for a better life and world are the seeds to personal growth, revolutionized societies, and life-changing technologies. Desire, hope, and imagination are the cornerstones of social change and the first targets for those who fight against it. “You can’t go forward with cynicism—cynicism being disbelief,” says Jackson, whose catchphrase “Keep hope alive” may be one of the most popular quotes in modern history. “You have to hope against the odds and not go backwards by fear. Dr. King, Chavez, Gandhi were people who removed people from low places and had the hope,” Jackson says.
    Imagination, hope, and the expectation for transformative change is a through line that undergirds most Afrofuturistic art, literature, music, and criticism. It is the collective weighted belief that anchors the aesthetic. It is the prism through which some create their way of life. It’s a view of the world.
    Where there is no vision, the people perish.
Mind Shifting
    Taking on this idea of race as a technology sparked new ideas in me. A deliberate by-product of the transatlantic slave trade enforced by violence and law, race (i.e., the division of white and black and the power imbalances based on skin color) simply didn’t exist prior to five hundred years ago. I share this in my talks, and I can see the churning of old thoughts and flickers of new ones when audiences begin to see race as a man-made creation.
    As a writer who tends to position everything in a cultural context, I was challenged by writing Rayla Illmatic, a character in a completely different world. I wrestled with how to describe characters physically and how to explain their family histories. If your great-grandmother came to a new planet from America, does its history have any context several billion miles away? This stretched my imagination, and this exercise in transcending familiar boundaries is an experience that Afrofuturists seek and encourage. Artist and professor D. Denenge Akpem, an acclaimed ritual-based artist, argues that the artistic process of Afrofuturism itself facilitates personal growth.
    Dr. William “Sandy” Darity, a professor of African American history at Duke University, follows me on Twitter. He’s a
Rayla
fan, and when he assembled a panel for the Transcending Race conference at Ohio State University, he asked if