After looking back at the last 2 drafts of my Archive Project Proposal, instead of researching the whole key terms that are part of the genre in Science Fiction, I have decided to do only one key term that can be really important to the readers. The key term that I chose was the word android. As for the project itself, I’m going to go over the connection between androids and the African Americans. It is true that androids and African Americans are different; however, they both can be a little similar to each other. For instance, they both had their difficult times of trying to be part of civilization in their own experiences. The androids had some tough times trying to blend in to the human world, while the humans are trying to hunt them down and end their lives. As for the African Americans, they have their rough days back in the day when the white people did not want the black people to be equal as citizens. Therefore, the connection between the two are actually strong.
The reason why the connections are strong is because they have similar harsh events in their history. For example, African Americans had to dealt with the Jim Crow Laws back in 1880s. In the minds of the white people, they did not want the black people to be as equals to them. Especially how a certain group called the Ku Klux Klan, KKK, use torture and violence to give a certain “message” to the blacks. This shows white people did not want the blacks to be part of the civilizations. Comparing to the androids, they wanted to be part of humanity, but humans wouldn’t allow that to happen. Every time they try to blend in with no harm, they would still be kept on hunted down.
Another reason of why their connection is strong is when people think that they’re insignificant. In other words, they shouldn’t exist from the very beginning. For example, there was an article about a graduate student that talked about how creating androids and have them be part of the human race is a bad idea. He had described about the principle of the Uncanny Valley, which states that if an android is getting more realistic as a human, then they have “no basis in reality.” It claims that the student cannot really trust onto androids if they’re starting to become like humans. Similar to the African Americans when white people say that they’re not good enough to be like them.
Also, in comparison to the article comes to journal that talks about the androids and the mixture of racial. The journal had talked about a certain term to describe the imagination of the multiracial future, and that term was called Mulatto. It is said that a Mulatto is a person who was born by the mixture white and one black ancestry . They actually used this term to describe of how androids can be an imagination of the racial mixture. This shows that androids are like black people because they treated wrongly just how the blacks were treated from the beginning.
Another reason of why is because they were treated unfairly because of their race and who they are. For example, an author had created a book that talks about how some Science Fiction vocabularies were created because of racial implementations. It included the famous authors that wrote Science Fiction novels and they talk about how their books were created that involved racism. Another example, comparing to the text, is yet another book that is similar to other one. But in this text, it only talks about the androids and it goes into the details of how they were enslaved before they could escape their creators in a text that was created by the author. It describes how the enslaved androids was a sign of racism. This shows not only did the black people had to deal with themselves as slaves, but the androids had to experience that as well.
Finally, both the androids and African Americans had determination of never giving up until they achieve their goal. For example, there was an article that talked about a film where it involved androids try to blend in the human world. It talks about how one of the characters that created the androids, wanted to let them see the real world with their own minds so that they can experience their own emotions. Their main goal is to have them be part of humanity. This shows that androids had to keep on moving forward until they achieve their goal just how the blacks had fight against segregation in order for them to be equals as the white people.
Works Cited:
A Brief History of Jim Crow.” Constitutional Rights Foundation,
http://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month/a-brief-history-of-jim-crow
Bosch, Torie. “The Android Head of Philip K. Dick.” The Slate Book Review, 1 June 2012,
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2012/06/philip_k_dick_robot_an_android_head_of_the_science_fiction_author_is_lost_forever_.html
Lavender III, Isiah Race in American Science Fiction. Indiana University Press, 2011
Dinello, Daniel. Technophobia!: Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology. University of Texas Press, 2005
Burks, Robin. “How AMC’s ‘Humans’ Breaks The Sci-Fi Mold: A Look Ahead To The Season Finale.” Tech Times, 15, August, 2015
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/76705/20150815/how-amcs-humans-breaks-the-sci-fi-mold-a-look-ahead-to-the-season-finale.htm
Nishime, LeiLani. “The Mulatto Cyborg: Imagining a Multiracial Future.” Cinema Journal, 2005
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