2020 didn’t bring the dystopia – it was always here

It’s been some year. With the pandemic, the violent repression of protests in the US, and the ever-increasing reach of surveillance-tech, journalists and social media have been throwing around the word ‘dystopia’ a lot. The grim future shown in dystopian sci-fi feels like it’s finally arrived.

In fact, dystopian conditions have always been here - white, middle-class people just aren’t used to being affected by them. The US was founded on slavery, and it’s hard to think of anything more dystopian than that.

This article explores how the media’s portrayal of dystopia has let us down, in particular by removing race from the picture. When we view dystopia as something that happens in the future, we fail to recognise the ways in which it’s always been here.