A reboot of Derrick Bell’s ‘The Space Traders’: using racial hypos to teach white pre-service teachers about race and racism

Abstract

This article imagines what it might look like for White people to commit to racial justice in the U.S. as if their very lives depended on its success. Inspired by the venerable storytelling of Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, W. E. B. Du Bois and Adrien Wing, as well as the tradition of science fiction in Black Diasporan writing, the author revisits Bell’s well-known ‘The Space Traders’ counterstory. This ‘reboot’ forecasts the arrival of Space Traders who target White people who choose not to do the work of reckoning with whiteness and the legacy of white supremacy. The story serves as a ‘racial hypo’ or allegory to challenge White pre-service teachers, specifically, to consider what they need to do to betray white supremacy.

Keywords:

• Critical race theory
• Derrick Bell
• race traitor
• Space Traders
• teacher education

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Erratum

Notes

1. Wing (2014) cited two earlier appearances of ‘The Space Traders’ in 1989.

2. ‘The Space Traders’ has also been critiqued. Olivas (1989–1990), though supportive of ‘The Space Traders’, wanted to show how other racial groups have been similarly betrayed for the benefit and advantage of White people. Bell (1999) himself recounted the critique of an audience member who thought that ‘The Space Traders’ story underestimated the danger than Black people face in the present, saying, ‘Professor, if you were not so taken up with your stories, you would see that black folks are being removed in great numbers, not to some other planet but to the cemetery’ (as quoted in Bell 1999, 346). Other criticisms range from accusing him of being anti-Semitic (Bell 1999 citing Farber and Sherry 1998) and the story as an example of reverse racism (Bell 1999 citing Thernstrom and Thernstrom 1997).

3. Harris (1993).

4. Obama (2013).

5. Loewen ([1995] 2007).

6. Matsuda (1987).