The Afrofuturist Affair got some love from The New York Times

Housing attorney and sci-fi writer Rasheedah Phillips founded the Afrofuturist Affair as a digital place for Afrofuturist literature and art, but over time (and space), it’s become oh-so-much more than that.

It’s been an eye-catching year for the award-winning Black sci-fi collective.

But the year isn’t over yet: Last week, Afrofuturist Affair was name-dropped in a New York Times feature on contemporary artists shepherding Afrofuturism into mainstream culture.

Artists like Rihanna, Erykah Badu, Beyonce and Solange Knowles. Not bad company for Phillips and company. Afrofuturist Affair though, is on a different level.

Here’s why: NYT minimizes the Afrofuturist Affair’s reach by describing the collective as a “site” on the internet. The organization launched Community Futures Lab earlier this year, an effort to use Afrofuturism as a means of capturing and preserving the memories and stories of long-time residents of Sharswood.

@AfroFuturAffair in this NYT piece – follow them, attend their events, and connect w/their work! ❤️ https://t.co/YaEDodvPwk

— Katy Otto (@exfkaty) December 18, 2016

Afrofuturism, the writer argues, can serve as a remedy of sorts for “racial and ethnic minorities” in a time of racial, social, cultural and political division. None of the pop artists mentioned in the feature can claim to live that through quite as intimately as Phillips.