In 2020, while the COVID-19 pandemic was raging and civil unrest over the killing of George Floyd swathed North America and beyond, I was angry. During conversations with people during these protests against institutions of power, I realized something needed to change, intrinsically, in the conversation. Blue is my attempt at education and discussion, shifting the power of conversation back to a place of potential enlightenment.
I wrote Blue because I realized people rarely understand the scale of racism in the Americas, past and present. The scope at which dehumanization happens and how easily the apathy of the masses empowers the hatred of a few to perpetrate cruelty on a massive scale, the enormity of it, is nearly incomprehensible unless you’re placed in that situation. I wrote Blue to condense the absolute horror of being seen as less than human into a single novel, despite being an uneasy, and sometimes horrific topic, the unavoidable horror of blind ignorance must be brought to light, examined, and understood.
Racial science is nothing new. We’ve used “science” to justify genocide against the Jewish people, Africans, and Indigenous communities. When we allow ourselves to be divided on trivial characteristics like skin color, sex, where we’re born, the color and shape of our hair, what language we speak, etc… we allow ourselves to forget our shared humanity. We say We Remember and Never Again, but we never remember; at some point, we forget. One day, eye color might matter more than skin color ever did, and could you imagine how dark a world like that would be?
I’m sure I’ll get angry messages asking how I could write something like this, of my sadism and evilness, to even create the scenarios you’ll read about. I remind you, I drew from the real-world atrocities that have actually been lived by real people. The transatlantic slave trade, The Holocaust, indigenous residential schools, Irish indentured servitude, and so on. Every horrific, torturous experience is drawn from the lived experiences of people long gone. Honor them through remembrance.
At the end of the day, I didn’t write Blue to anger, hurt, inflame, and certainly not to deride blue-eyed people, but to educate. I want people to imagine an “impossible world” lived by ethnic minorities for centuries and beyond, situations that have risen over, and over, and over again in “civilized” countries that would “never” do something like that. Never assume we’ve put the darkness behind us. Fight for people that don’t look like you because tomorrow, you might be the one targeted.
Don’t take your humanity for granted,
Miguel A. Fenrich