Ray Bradbury's paired short stories "Way in the Middle of the Air" (1950) and "The Other Foot" (1951) explore racism through the conceit of an African American exodus to Mars. Though Bradbury was not an Afrofuturist, both stories use Afrofuturist themes and concerns when exploring white anxieties about white supremacy. Tracing the publication history of each story, I read both stories through Michael Vannoy Adams's psychological concept of the multicultural imagination, a means by which prejudice is met and dispelled in the psyche. "Way in the Middle of the Air" unmasks the fragility of white supremacy as an ideology, while "The Other Foot" stands as an exercise for white readers (and its white author) to walk a mile in the feet of Blacks who had suffered the violence of racism. Bradbury emerges as a white enemy of white supremacy and early ally to Afrofuturism.
