Disappearing Acts: What Happens the Day After We’re Gone?

By Mzukisi Qunta

When We Vanish, What’s Left?

Derrick Bell’s haunting thought experiment The Day After We’re Gone imagines a United States where all Black people have mysteriously disappeared. The story, unsettling in its calm presentation, forces readers to sit with a single unnerving question: What would change in our absence? Bell doesn't provide easy answers—he doesn’t have to. The void speaks for itself.

It’s a story I’ve returned to often. Not just as an allegory about race in America, but as a tool for examining the subtle machinery of power: how societies assign value, interpret silence, and manufacture both heroes and threats. Recently, as news emerged of white Afrikaners from South Africa seeking refugee status in countries like the U.S., I was reminded of Bell’s tale—and how narratives about who deserves protection and who is seen as a problem remain disturbingly lopsided.

Who Gets to Be Missed?

Bell’s central thesis is quietly damning: if the structures of racism persist even after the departure of those they allegedly target, then perhaps those structures aren’t about people at all—but about systems protecting themselves.

The premise invites a reversal: if a marginalized group vanished, would society grieve their loss? Would the systems built on their exclusion fall apart, or simply find a new scapegoat?

Contrast that with current narratives around white South African Afrikaners claiming persecution and displacement. Their stories are circulated with deep emotional framing, often positioning them as victims of a failed post-apartheid promise. And while these individuals’ experiences may be real and painful, the way their stories are received—often with empathy and urgency—stands in stark contrast to the way Black South Africans have been historically ignored, criminalized, or erased.

Chomsky’s Warning: Manufacturing Consent

This is where Noam Chomsky’s theory becomes illuminating. In Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky and Edward Herman explain how media systems filter information to serve elite interests. Not by inventing lies—but by selecting which truths get told, how often, and to what emotional end (Herman & Chomsky, 1988).

In this framework, the Afrikaner refugee story isn’t just news; it’s a chosen story. Its emotional resonance, paired with the racial familiarity of its subjects to predominantly Western media audiences, makes it more palatable—more marketable—than stories of impoverished Black South Africans suffering from systemic neglect.

The implication? Certain absences are mourned. Others are expected.

South Africa: A Mirror and a Warning

In South Africa, the post-1994 reality was supposed to be a rainbow nation reborn. But in the absence of systemic economic transformation, race-based inequalities have calcified into class stratifications. Land reform stalled. Education gaps widened. And where structural injustice remains, fear thrives.

Some Afrikaners—displaced, economically squeezed, or feeling culturally threatened—have framed their situation in terms similar to minority persecution narratives. It’s a claim that has found strange resonance in American far-right circles, where the idea of "white genocide" has gained traction.

What’s often ignored is how this flips Bell’s story on its head: the people who once held systemic power now recast themselves as vulnerable, their stories suddenly amplified by global media, NGOs, and asylum courts.

Meanwhile, millions of Black South Africans who never truly entered the promised land of post-apartheid prosperity continue to live in erasure. Their vanishing—into poverty, unemployment, or migration—is not mourned.

Telling Stories That Serve Power

When Bell asks us to imagine a world without Black people, he is not being fantastical. He is forcing us to reckon with presence: how presence is tolerated, monetized, or criminalized depending on the storyteller.

Chomsky would argue that these narratives don’t just happen—they’re cultivated. Stories of white Afrikaner refugees gain traction because they feed into dominant media structures that require sympathetic whiteness to maintain Western cultural coherence.

That doesn’t mean those stories are false. But it does mean we should question why they’re foregrounded—and what is being left out.

Personal Reflections: The Weight of Invisibility

I’ve often thought about what it means to disappear in plain sight. As someone working in engineering and compliance, I navigate systems every day—technical, organizational, bureaucratic. These systems, like media, have rules that seem neutral but often aren’t.

When I think of Bell’s story, I think of meetings where my voice is present but discounted. Of decisions made without consultation. Of contributions recognized only after repackaging. Of vanishing—not physically, but functionally.

So when I see how quickly certain narratives become headline news, while others languish in silence, I remember Bell’s warning: it is not about who is gone, but about what that absence reveals.

Making the Invisible Visible Again

To undo this manufactured imbalance, we need to be intentional:

• Tell the stories that don’t trend: Not as a counterweight, but as a correction.

• Question which absences are mourned: And which are ignored.

• Decenter sympathy from whiteness: Without vilifying anyone, we must recognize how media emotional economies are skewed.

• Use platforms like this: Blogs, local newsletters, community spaces—to disrupt the narrative filter.

Because in the end, Bell’s world isn’t fiction. It’s a lens. And Chomsky’s world isn’t paranoid. It’s mapped.

Our job? Fill in what’s missing.

References

• Bell, D. (1992). Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. Basic Books.

• Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon Books.

• News24. (2024). SA Human Rights Commission dismisses claims of white genocide. https://www.news24.com

• BBC News. (2023). The Afrikaner community in South Africa: Between nostalgia and fear. https://www.bbc.com

• Al Jazeera. (2024). White South Africans seek asylum in the US: What’s behind the claims? https://www.aljazeera.com

Written by Mzukisi Qunta — BIM Manager, compliance specialist, and cultural observer exploring the intersections of media, race, and power in modern society