The Hollow Echoes of Justice in a Whitewashed Revolution

Touchdown in yet another iteration of this familiar stretch of history—the same flaring tensions, cardboard signs, and cries for justice that ripple through so many versions of 21st-century America. But, as always, here lies the twist: this timeline’s major divergence revolves around the adoption of the Population Optimization and Cultural Cohesion Acts of 1965, which not only capped immigration quotas at an absurdly low number but also mandated state-funded "Repatriation Drives." Imagine my delight when I realized that in this version of the Black Lives Matter protests, far fewer Black lives are here to matter.

Don’t misunderstand—the movement still exists, but it’s eerily quieter here and disarmingly monochromatic. The state-sponsored repatriation campaigns, originally marketed as a “proud opportunity for global cultural realignment,” succeeded in incentivizing (read: coercing) millions of former citizens to “rediscover their ancestral homelands.” Countries across Africa received Americans by the planeload through the 1970s and ‘80s, whether they were prepared to house or feed them or not. What's bizarre is that America's national consciousness is still swollen with self-congratulatory rhetoric about being a melting pot. I’ve yet to figure out what can melt if most of the ingredients aren’t even in the pot anymore.

Take New Atlanta, for example. Here, the city’s ratio of fried chicken restaurants to vegan poke bowl establishments has inverted sharply since 1979, reflecting a consumer base that's grown overwhelmingly white. Subconsciously, I reached for an iced tea sweet enough to soften my temporal jetlag, only to be handed some lukewarm, unsweetened "Herbal Infusion™" sludge. Moments like this make me long for parallels where taste and diversity survived the bureaucracy.

Interestingly, the remaining African Americans keep getting retroactively mythologized in this timeline. Apparently, Martin Luther King Jr. (here abbreviated to "MLK" in even *more* gaudy street names) wasn’t just an activist but a one-man nation-builder. He’s now depicted in schoolbooks alongside George Washington and Thomas Jefferson—except, conveniently, this curriculum skips over the fact that most of the descendants of the enslaved have been "relocated" back across the Atlantic.

Of course, the Population Optimization and Cultural Cohesion Acts didn’t stop with Black Americans. Other groups, particularly Latinos, were also nudged toward the exit ramps of this selective melting pot. As a result, America’s farms are now heavily mechanized, with drones and robots doing all the labor that used to fall to human farmworkers. What struck me as especially ironic here is that "mechanized produce" tastes worse, costs more, and has the audacity to start a local-seasonalist cult. (I've been accosted *twice* today by activists handing out leaflets on "Digital Strawberry Sovereignty.") Leave it to humanity to innovate hunger in the name of progress.

And oh, the fragility of whiteness here. Cultural touchstones that lean too heavily on non-European influences now require footnotes upon footnotes to assure people that enjoying them is, in fact, patriotic. When I exited my transport pod, I tuned in to a local radio segment where two hosts were nervously discussing whether sushi burritos might be considered "culturally treasonous." This degree of cognitive dissonance could fuel entire PhD theses—in multiple timelines.

Still, there's something hauntingly poignant about the protests today. Few remain to chant, “Say their names,” and even fewer to remember what those names actually meant. With such a diminished racial tapestry, the blame has predictably shifted; White activists now don’t chant for Black lives as much as they demand lower app subscription fees and free universal Wi-Fi. In this alternate universe, injustice has all the color of oatmeal.