Cebo Campbell's 'Sky Full of Elephants' book: What happens if the U.S. is solely Black people?
I don't agree with Don't Call Me White Girl's views on Black people not having white friends
I’d forgotten about the library request for “Sky Full of Elephants” by Cebo Campbell. The wife of a neighbor I talk to frequently is in a book club. Several weeks ago, I asked her for a book recommendation and she said this title. Without reading the summary, I added it to my library hold queue and immediately moved on to reading Arsenio Hall’s book. I didn’t think much about the book after that — until now, when I picked it up from the library and read the inside cover. The book blurb caught me by surprise.
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In a coincidental turn of events, the book hold for “Sky Full of Elephants” was ready at the same time I watched Damona “Don’t Call Me White Girl” Love declare on “The Joe Budden Podcast” that she does not allow her children to have white friends or be that one black friend. In her opinion, white people (especially white men) are dangerous.
I paused over that statement, knowing how horrendous one person currently at the White House is on his own — along with his cabinet. More than half (55%) of white voters cast ballots for Trump in 2024. An identical amount of white voters favored Trump in 2020 and 54% selected him in 2016. Without Trump, ICE would lose majority of its employees, and the unsettling human trafficking of immigrants would stop too.
But one look at “Mona” made her declaration confusing to me because I thought she was biracial this entire time. (Judging from her commentary about how several relatives in her family have green eyes and how gorgeous she thinks JBP co-host Antwan “Ish” Marby is because of his own green eyes, I still get the impression her family reunion looks more like Butter Pecan ice cream than Chocolate Truffle.)
Recommended Read: “Productively teaching black children about colorism ~ When I found out my cousin favored light-skinned women”
With a Substack series named “I Do See Color,” clearly I have no problem discussing race and racism, but I still wanted to melt into my desk chair when I heard Mona going on and on about how dangerous all white men are. Her stance was controversial already, but what made it even more awkward was Richard “Parks” Vallely was sitting directly across from her while she said it. And Parks, who is usually chatty on the JBP, hadn’t said a word.
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While Mona has a right to her opinion about banning white friends and to parent how she sees fit, I immediately thought of my own childhood, specifically two white childhood friends (via my father’s co-worker) who strolled into my surprise seventh birthday and mingled with at least 20 Black folks like it was no big deal.
I think those two sisters hung out with more of my birthday guests than I did, and their white mother fit right in too. When Santa came to the work Christmas parties, I beelined for those same two sisters before I even glanced over at the guy with the elves and the reindeer. If my father was still with that employer, my guess is me and those two girls would’ve been friends for much longer.
The unsettling similarities between Nolan Wells and Shanquella Robinson
Mona’s response about banning white friends came up while the JBP crew discussed Nolan Wells, a Black 18-year-old who was found dead after going missing on Horn Island in Mississippi. The problem with Mona saying that it’s too dangerous for Black people (especially Black youth) to have white friends is that it also infers that Black people are invincible with Black friends. Not always.
Four years later, we still don’t know exactly what led to the death of 25-year-old Shanquella Robinson from Charlotte, North Carolina. We just know a drunken, naked fight happened in Mexico with one of her travel companions, she went missing and ended up dead. Whether that was from alcohol poisoning or a spinal injury is still up for debate.
Either way, the “Cabo 6” all telling different stories sounds creepily similar to the Nolan Wells mystery, and none of the Cabo 6 are white. Both groups sound like they are lying, including the two who had Nolan Wells’ keys and smartphone but claimed he stayed behind to hang out with a girl. Their stories are giving me the same suspicious energy as the one person who dodged a summons from Shanquella Robinson’s family by changing her name and location.
Recommended Read: “Judge denies motion to dismiss Shanquella Robinson wrongful death lawsuit, court records say”
Racism clearly plays one part in Black mortality, but “Sky Full of Elephants” kicks it up a notch
If I start writing down all the Black people who have been killed by non-Black people from the 1900s and onward, I could fill up a scroll. If that list started from the Middle Passage and onward (even after Juneteenth), museum exhibits aren’t big enough to honor every name.
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In “Sky Full of Elephants,” author Cebo Campbell makes Black folks’ lives initially sound like it would be paradise if we were left on our own. In the opening chapter of the fiction book, all the white people in the United States had already walked into the nearest body of water and drowned.
Charlie Brunton, a Black man who had been freed from prison after a wrongful conviction, became a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University. The drownings made the world so much different than when he went into the prison system. Then, he got a phone call from his 19-year-old biracial daughter and realized all the white people didn’t drown. There was a technicality. Biracial people were rejected from the nationwide suicidal drowning.
The water literally refused to engulf biracial people. This was an interesting (and disturbing) turn of events. But that wasn’t what got my attention the most. It was how the author described how much life changed without white people and how this did and did not change Charlie’s future.