This is a short story in a larger collective whole titled, I believe, the Meaning of life is 42…no wait a minute, that’s Douglas Adams, let me see here (rummages through brain, monkeys assist, accidentally leaving behind a banana peel) ‘gee thanks guys for being stereotypes’ (monkey flashes a thumbs up as it, smacking its lips, trundles away). Ok, here it is: Unexplained Presence.
The story I am commenting on is called Darling. As far as I can tell (mostly because I recognize some of the names) it is a tale of the glory days of Hollywood (30’s to early 50’s) involving racism. That’s really about all I could gather, the writing was very obtuse and was overly attempting to convey a meaning by hiding it as deep as possible. Gotta tell you, this stuff wears thin after a while but moving on…
The story involves people wearing masks, and I think the masks are ‘black faces’ as the story tells it. I think its an allusion to how people viewed and still view African Americans in America for the main. The calling of them as ‘Negroes’ is obviously a racist line (and really means the same thing as the other N word and I don’t mean Netherlands) and conveys the uppity, aristocratic false superiority of the speakers. I liked though the masks tended to fall off towards the end, revealing something different. As far as a deeper meaning, I couldn’t tell you really.
I think, though, this is why I read sci-fi and dark fantasy and sci-fantasy. In these worlds the universes if you will are multi-ethnic. Take my current fave, Warhammer 40K: the Emperor of Man is ancient Anatolian, which would mean that he would look Arab to most Westerners who couldn’t distinguish the types. The White Scars Space Marine Legion is dominantly Asian, specifically Mongolian and Central Asian, the Salamanders are Black, and the traitor Word Bearers and loyalist Blood Angles seemed, possibly either Iranian or Arabic. The Thousand Sons are sort of Egyptian, in the ancient sense however. And the Space Wolves are awesome as they’re Norse/Vikings, and so on and so forth. Lando Calrissian from Star Wars was Black, the royal family in David Weber’s Honor Harrington universe (Manticoran royal family that is) is Black, and Ferro Maljinn from the First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie is a Black, badass woman. It’s not just that this type of fiction is more of a straight narrative, and thus more entertaining, but also it’s charactered in a rich, ‘real’ world. Peopled by all kinds of people, and it’s partly what drew me in…
Dark Musings 
Ok, good, also maybe read the intro to the Bryant piece; it’s a mix of genres including non-fiction thus commenting on the real world racism of both history and present. Some genres (like sci-fi) have moved beyond this is some ways, but some genres and elements of our society have not.