Across cultures, fairy tales and myths are used to teach children the normative values of a society. Stories follow a similar template: the main character is a child that listeners can identify with. There are fantastical creatures, some good, others evil. There is a moral challenge of some sort, a test of a child’s adherence to values, which may threaten the sanctity of the world in an epic battle of good versus evil. Hansel and Gretel leave home and risk being dinner for a witch. The Little Red Riding Hood learns not to talk to strangers or grandmothers with big teeth. Poor, orphaned Cinderella can marry the prince, as long as the shoe fits.

Harry Potter is no different. But, it’s the values it preaches that begs for a closer look. This is the most popular book and movie series of our times, engaging both children and adults globally, and making J.K. Rowling a very rich lady. I’ve always been struck at how dark its view of childhood is, seen through Harry’s eyes. He is orphaned as a child, his parents killed by an evil wizard who threatens to bring the wizarding world into the Dark Side. His Muggle relatives—a delightful poke at the British bourgeoisie—force Harry to live in a crawl space under the stairs. This is the universal child of all fairy tales: unloved, alone, and neglected, but a true king/princess/wizard/genius hidden within.

Saved by Dumbledore and whisked away to Hogwarts, the world gets more menacing. Portals to the alternative universe are everywhere but hidden to humans. The wizarding world has odd creatures, magicians cloaked in dark shawls whispering incantations, and there’s always an edge of danger mixed in with the fantastical. Even at school, the castle is filled with hidden rooms, mirrors that show truths, memories captured in capsules, portraits that talk back, and staircases that constantly shift like an M. Escher print. The feasts of ice cream, cookies, and cake are grotesque, a childhood fantasy gone terribly wrong, and a stomachache soon to follow. In the forests, at the periphery of the school’s grounds, live giants, centaurs, and shadows of the evil Lord Voldemort.

So, there’s the genre of myths and cautionary tales that Harry Potter falls into. The other is boarding school narrative. These are coming of age stories, usually of an outsider plucked out of her surroundings (colony or poverty), and sent to the center of empire to be schooled to become imperial technocrats. I’m thinking about Gandhi traveling alone to England to study law, uncertain of his English, and ashamed to eat in the dining hall because he didn’t know how to use a knife and fork. What do the aspiring wizards at Hogwarts do upon graduation? I doubt it’s to return to the Muggle world to work as dentists. What order of wizardry are they employed to serve?

Okay, yes there is Uhura. There’s the Asian man who’s name I can never remember. And, there’s also the one with the thick Russian accent, proof that the Cold War is over as humans unite to conquer the dark space. But, scanning the faces of the instruments of empire, the Starfleet Academy located in the center of liberal white U.S.: San Francisco, I saw very few faces similar to my own. There was the obligatory green woman, a love slave on former episodes of the television series, the weird alien-thing, and a black man with a striking resemblance to Tavis Smiley as head of a council. Every other face is white, white, and more white.

What type of future utopia is this anyway? There’s one intergalactic government, modeled  after the United Nations, ruled by a charter and a labyrinth of bureaucratic codes and practices, that every budding Starfleet member must remember and recite at climactic moments. It’s funny how at times of interpersonal conflict, whether between Starfleet soldiers or between Starfleet and other beings, an arcane Federation code comes to the rescue with an answer. It seems that in the future, you would live long and prosper if you have the ability to remember contents as prosaic as the listings in the Yellow Pages or the fine print that accompanies your Linux installation.

What is the purpose of boldly going where no (white) man has gone before? To bring order, civilization, and warp speed to the far reaches of the universe. How interesting that it becomes the duty, no, the destiny of the white commanders of the Federation to shine the light of rationality and reason on undiscovered peoples and planets. How similar to the burden that white men have operated under in the past two centuries of imperialism and enslavement of the global south, making the darker ones either cheap labor or new markets to push their goods in.

The Romulans are primitive peoples, who earn their living mining the depths of planets. Their clothing is crude, in a steampunk and future primitive kind of way. Their foreheads are marked with the swirl of jagged black arcs, emblems for many fraternity members who have these signs tattooed on their skin as signs of how they’re down with the people. Does it matter that the Romulans are pissed? Does it count when there is genocide of one species but not the peoples of the Federation?

Now, I am dubious of my zeal to be a Starfleet member. Especially if it asks me to choose: do I want to be a Vulcan or a human? Spock, cursed with this double consciousness, is asked to choose sides. He is born with a veil, gifted with second sight of logic and reason, but a commander in a human-dominated world. This double-consciousness makes him ever feel his two-ness, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one pointy-eared body. The biography of Spock is the history of this strife for people of color, this longing to merge our selves into mainstream society.

Beam me into the future and I will shun the Starfleet Academy. Instead, I would join the rebels on the planet Tatooine. Meet me in the Mos Eisely Cantina, where we’ll plot the overthrow of the Empire. Or, wait. Am I getting my sci fi/fantasy worlds confused?