This isn’t unexpected for white people, especially this country’s white male storytellers. Not only can many of them not imagine a past without enslaved black people, they cannot imagine a present alternate world without it either, nor can they seem to imagine any future where white people aren’t still dominant. (Nor can these same men imagine an alternate world in which the Holocaust had never occurred.)

For a good example: I can name at least three black authors who have done so, Nisi Shawl, and Octavia Butler being just two storytellers who have imagined pasts, futures, and alternate worlds without black enslavement. All that means to me is that for all their bluster about black people getting over enslavement, white men cannot seem to see past it either.