Book Review: Roger A. Sneed, The Dreamer and the Dream: Afrofuturism and Black Religious Thought, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2021

Is it possible to rework a religion to service emancipatory ends? From the outset, the project seems not only futile but self-defeating. But less one precipitates, Sneed's proposal does not apply makeup on some old synthesis. For Black religious thought has been classically a contradiction in movement: a white God can only service white supremacy, exacerbating African-Americans' extended slavery and misery. With science fiction (novels and films) along with experimental music, there emerge promising conceptions of God and religion that are subversive to white supremacy. Artistically, Sneed qualifies these conceptions as Afrofuturism. The book does not claim that blueprints are ready or that meaningful liberation is imminent. Rather, Sneed claims Afrofuturism “disrupts pervasive marking of race and destructive coding of Black bodies and existence as inferior” (p. xii). It is a field of reflection that promises to propagate toward a revolution.