White mars by Brian W. Aldiss & Roger Penrose. Chapter 8, 9

Dayo again asserted he had been victimised. He burst into angry tears.

‘Oh dear, the blue ball is in the air again,’ said Guenz.

Then Dayo changed tack. He admitted that he had stolen the theme from Beza’s music, having been unable to get it out of his head.

‘I admit it. I’m guilty as hell. You lot are guilty too. Okay, you show no racial prejudice against Beza and the Orientals, but you are prejudiced against us blacks. You secretly don’t believe we’re good for anything, though you’ll never admit it. I’m quite a good musician, but still I’m a black musician, not just a musician. Isn’t that the case?

‘My compositions were not appreciated. Not until I took that Romanian tune and transcribed it. Didn’t Brahms do the same sort of thing? What’s wrong with it? I altered it, made it my own, didn’t I? But just because I was black, you picked on me.’

‘Perhaps the mistake was,’ said Guenz, mildly, ‘not to label the piece “Romanian Rhapsody” – to acknowledge the borrowing. Then you’d have been praised for your cleverness.’

But Dayo insisted that he would merely have been accused of stealing.

‘I meant no harm. I only wished to raise my status. But if you’re black you’re always in trouble, whichever way you turn.’

He went off in dejection.

Tom and Guenz looked at each other in dismay.

Then Guenz broke into a laugh. ‘It’s you whites who are to blame for everything, including getting us here,’ he said.

‘My instinct is to legislate. But what could legislation do in a case like this? How might one word it? Can I ask you, Guenz, do you feel yourself racially discriminated against, as a Central Asian?’

‘It has sometimes proved to be an advantage, because it had some slight novelty value. That’s worn off. There was a time when people were suspicious of my foreignness, but that is in-built, a survival trait. I was equally suspicious of you whites. Still am, to a degree.’

They discussed whether they had any extra in-built discrimination against the Nigerian, Dayo. Had they expected him to ‘get away’ with something? Had the dismal past history of white victimisation of blacks anything to do with it? Was there a superstitious mistrust of ‘black’ as a colour, as there might be of left-handedness?

These were questions they could not answer. They had to conclude it might be the case. Certainly, they would be wary if a traditional green Martian appeared in their midst.

They could only hope that such atavistic responses would die away as rational men of all colours mixed.

We could only hope that the colour question would fade away, united as we were by a common concern regarding survival and in perfecting our society. However, the matter was to arise again later, and in a more serious case.

During this period, I consulted with many people, delegating duties where it was possible to do so. Many people also came to my office to deliver advice or complaint. One of these visitors was a rather lacklustre-looking young YEA scientist. He announced himself as Chad Chester.

‘Maybe you know my name as the guy who went down into the water caves off Marineris with Kathi Skadmorr. I guess I didn’t make a great showing compared with her.’

‘Not many of us do. What can I do for you?’

Chad explained that he had listened to my lecture on the five obstacles to contentment on Earth. He noted that at one point I had referred to the slogan, ‘All men are equal’. He was sure this saying embodied a mistaken assumption; he never thought of himself as equal to Kathi, for example. That experience in the caves had led him to put down his thoughts on paper. He felt that ‘All men are equal’ should not be used in any Utopian declaration we might make, for reasons he had tried to argue.

When he had gone I set Chad’s paper aside. I looked at it two days later.

His argument was that the very saying was self-denying, since it mentioned only men and not women. It was meaningless to pretend that men and women were equal; they were certainly similar in many ways, but the divergence between them made the question of being equal (except possibly in law) irrelevant. Furthermore, the diversity of the genetic code meant a different inheritance of capacities even within a family.

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