We are surrounded with talk about otherness – about tensions that emerge when oppositions fracture our cherished worlds. So, what indeed are the relationships between extraterrestrials, myth, and experiences in the world that are racialized in ways that benefit some and disadvantage others?
In our next Myth Salon we are inviting discussion about extraterrestrials, myth, and racism as connected in ways that might make for fruitful conversations around and about the Nation of Islam, Sun Ra, Barney and Betty Hill, “the greys,” and other extraterrestrial traditions and narratives. Sun Ra was multi-faceted musician in the 1970s and 1980s who contended that African Americans were myths— that he was a myth himself —because the world did not recognize black people as being fully human, and America did not grant their full citizenship. Barney and Betty Hill were a mixed-race couple, who claimed to have been “abducted” by extraterrestrials during early and tense moments of the Civil Rights Movement. The Nation of Islam re-envisions Black origins in the cosmos and Black life on other planets in direct response to slavery and lynching. Grey aliens might symbolize the amalgamation or hybridization of the races in a manner that might reflect human desire to transcend problem of racism. The UFO Twins, Earlene Carr and Shurlene Wallace, reported experiencing extraterrestrials called “Galactics,” which they described as “beautiful Black women.”
