The Other Draft
Issue #583 Keith’s SciFi Musings Sunday, April 28, 2024
“I really don’t wanna go to Idaho, man. I mean I really do not wanna go there.”
“Yeah, well I can’t say I’m over the moon about getting shipped off to Portland, either. But we don’t have a choice, little brother. Blame the Draft.”
“You know, didn’t Granddad say he dodged the draft during the Vietnam War? I was thinking maybe…”
“Canada has a draft too. Plus there’s that law of return agreement our government signed with theirs. It’s kinda like what happened during slavery times between northern states and the south, where if we got caught trying to be free then they had to return us. So you can forget it.”
Marshall and I were sitting outside on the porch. It was a nice spring day in Detroit, the kind of day where normally we would have been out playing ball or maybe headed to Belle Isle with Dad to fish, or swim at the beach.
But after the Draft became law in the fall of 2076, nothing was ever quite normal again.
In fairness, I should say that the idea was well-intentioned. More or less. White folks were now the minority in the United States, just like they had been the minority around the world pretty much since Adam and Eve. But since they had been the majority for so long, it was hard for most of them to adjust, even though there had been a virtual countdown of news stories pumped out practically every day for several years before March 13, 2057, designed to prepare (white) Americans for the new reality of what we Black folks liked to call Happy Blackening Day. Officially it was called The Day of Return, which lets you know how little white folks had anything to do with what it was called. Even the whites who may have considered themselves progressives 10 or 20 years earlier were beginning to waver once the in-your-face implications of a colorized future were becoming clear.
But this was 2076, not 2026, so it was no longer a good idea to be openly racist and proud of it. Because that could not only land the police at your door, but it could get you hurt very much physically so with no repercussions and no recourse. So instead, similar to what happened once segregation became technically illegal and white folks devised numerous workarounds to defy the law, white people began to migrate to states like Idaho and Washington State and Oregon that had been nearly all-white for generations upon generations. It was a last-ditch desperate attempt to keep the clock from ticking.
And that trick might have worked back in the day when white privilege could still make anyone with blonde hair and blue eyes invisible to police brutality. But this wasn’t back in the day. The Electoral College had been dismissed and dismantled in 2042, and by 2056 both the Senate and the House were populated mostly by Black and Brown folk. Sadie Martinez-Abdullah Muhammad was now the President for crying out loud. The change hadn’t been at all gradual.
So when white folks thought they could run away to Whiteaho or wherever, Congress passed this law creating The Draft, designed to make sure there were no states in America with less than 35% Black and otherwise non-white people. The way the draft worked was that it attempted to “level the playing field” by drafting non-white American folks like myself and my little brother Marshall who lived in heavily non-white areas like Detroit and placing us in a draft pick situation where predominantly white states got to pick which non-white residents were rooted up and relocated to their turf. Those states that the lottery blessed with the higher numbers got their pick of the “good” and “better” brown-skinned folk. It went downhill from there if it was even possible to go downhill in such a situation.
The idea of providing a draft was supposedly a compromise letting terrified white folks have at least a little power over their diminished situation by being allowed to choose which dark people would be allowed among them since they couldn’t opt out altogether. Personally, I thought that was pretty screwed up, and I wasn’t the only one. I mean, why should me and Marshall be forced to leave home just to put some coffee in Idaho’s cream?
Is this really what it means to form a more perfect union?
The “Comments” feature is disabled for these posts. You can also discuss these facts in our community on Substack Notes. You can also read other Substack publications without subscribing to them when you join Notes.
These posts are free to read. To have 365 24/7 access to all our posts and podcast episodes and financially support “We Are Speaking” for no more than $5 per month, please subscribe at the paid level. You’ll receive a 7-day free trial!
Independent Authors and Creative Professionals: Branding and Marketing Courses and Networking Groups are available in the GCC Branding and Marketing Academy!
Pam’s Business Books and Keith’s SciFi Books are available for purchase here!