Sky Full of Elephants

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism.

In the novel, before Vivian becomes queen of Mobile, Alabama, she’s a prominent activist. Pre-event, she leads a protest to remove the statue of Raphael Semmes, a Confederate Navy officer, in Alabama. The scene links to real life, as Alabama officials removed the statue on June 5, 2020. The removal of the statue relates to George Floyd. On May 25, 2020, a white police officer killed George Floyd in Minnesota. Floyd’s death had a consequential impact on American society, sparking an array of activism and discussions about race and racism. Campbell’s book touches on the numerous racial issues that American society has faced after and before Floyd’s death.

The event in Sky Full of Elephants presents a binary viewpoint of race, reflecting the belief that white people, directly or indirectly, uphold and benefit from a racist system, so they’re inherently guilty. Such a perspective turns race into the central part of a person’s identity. In the novel, race determines the fate of the characters. The white people die because they’re white, and the Black people live because they’re Black. The American writers Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi share the binary perspective. In White Fragility (Beacon Press, 2018), DiAngelo argues that white people are automatically vessels of racism while Black people are inevitable victims of racism. In How to Be an Antiracist (One World, 2019), Kendi articulates a similar formula. He argues that people are either racist or antiracist: Every person must have a finite link to the issue.

Once Sidney goes to Orange Beach, she realizes that the people there have a variety of skin colors. Fela explains, “White isn’t a race, it’s an idea. People who still cling to it, they’re here” (380). Here, Campbell’s novel subverts the claim that race is a specific skin color. Now, race has become a series of concepts that anyone can follow. Race isn’t binary but fluid. Fela’s quote about race invokes the political science professor Adolph Reed. Reed wants society to focus on socioeconomic class, not race. More so, he contests theories of race that present Black people as a monolithic group that’s almost exclusively concerned with racism (Reed, Adolph Jr. “The Perils of Race Reductionism.” JSTOR Daily, 2020). As with any group, Black people have diverse concerns and interests: They’re not reducible to one issue.

At the same time, the machine presents Black people as a unified force since the machine symbolizes Black consciousness. Hosea describes the machine as:

The signal of our fractured consciousness. All those emotions, memory, and vengeance heavy as a storm in the sky. It’s a message. A feeling. A signal. It’s everything we felt and couldn’t say repressed in a frequency. Just here in America, we’re talking over four hundred years, man, generations upon generations, tortured, raped, possessed (341).

Hosea’s explanation suggests that Black people share the same wavelength. The “generations” of abuse have impacted all Black people, so when Hosea turned on the machine, the force of their collective sorrows pushed white people to drown themselves. Through the machine, Black people become the single, solid mass that Reed contests.

The narrator juxtaposes Vivian with provocative Black leaders like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. The contrast suggests that Vivian isn’t incendiary. Vivian’s activism and government are inclusive and humble. Another contemporary activist who contrasts with Vivian is Shaun King. In November 2014, a Cleveland police officer shot and killed Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old Black boy, because he was playing with a toy gun. Samaria Rice, Tamir’s mother, has criticized King for raising money for Tamir without her permission. King links to Black Lives Matter, and the movement received criticism when its leaders used $6 million to buy a mansion in California, which they stated would offer refuge to Black creatives working for the movement (Chappell, Bill. “BLM Leaders Face Questions After Allegedly Buying a Mansion with Donation Money.” NPR, 7 Apr. 2022). Vivian and Hosea live in a sumptuous home, but it’s on land that belongs to Hosea’s family. Their wealth allows them to support progressive causes in a way that aligns with their values.