The philosophical underpinnings of relativity, the physics of the very fast, are difficult to wrap one’s head around. There’s talk of reference frames, violations of causality, the difference between “seeing” and “observing,” light cones, the hypersurface of the present, events that extend into the past and the future.

In some ways, it’s easier to consider these constructs not on their own, solely used to parameterize the impossible to observe - but as a mechanism for parsing current events. In this context, a frame of reference suddenly becomes understandable - it’s simply a point of view, constructed through one’s experience, upbringing, and ancestral selection. 

Or, consider the light cone:

It’s a headache to look at. What the hell is the hypersurface of the present? What the hell does it mean for a space axis to extend in two directions, while time extends in a third? How can there be a “past light” cone? What is a future light cone?

All valid questions, reader. Let’s parse this in the context of actual human beings. The first thing to consider is that the “past” and “future” light cones are relevant to a single event happening in the present. If this chart actually represented all of the events that were occurring, it would just be a solid blue box that looks something like this:

So for clarity’s sake, we use the image with the past and future cones, where a single event is represented at the origin. Lets say, for the sake of connecting this to current events, that the event at the origin is the death of a handcuffed black man, caused by a police officer kneeling on his neck. 

The repercussions of this event, which spread out cataclysmically in directions, to affect all subsequent events, are represented in this chart as the widening “future light cone.” These events will stack on top of the repercussions of all other events, and in so doing will end up representing the other half of this diagram, the past light cone.

At first glance, it looks as if the chart is suggesting that the event, as it happens, goes back in time and is happening there as well - but that has to do with a strangeness of relativity, which suggests that time is a reversible process. The reality is much more simple - the events that fall under the “past light cone” are the myriad of events that have layered on top of each other to produce a society where this kind of brutality is institutionalized, accepted, and largely glazed over.

The events that fall into the past light cone go as far back as one cares to look. They can be traced back to Africa, to the betrayal of being sold to dutch slave traders in the first place. They can be traced to the horrific conditions of the middle passage, where humans that had done little than be in the wrong place at the wrong time were faced with the stark reality that nothing, for them or for their children, would quite make sense for generations. 

The American Slave Coast, a horrifying book written by Ned and Constance Sublette deals with another hideous aspect of the past light cone. According to the Sublettes, the South “did not only produce tobacco, rice, sugar, and cotton as commodities for sale; it produced people.” The vast majority of the slaves that tilled the land in the South were born right here, on American soil - the products of an astoundingly profitable industry that accounted for the greatest share of the wealth in the United States at the time.

There, in the past light cone, is the devastation of the Jim Crow south, the lynching of Emmett Till, the red lining, the separate but equal, the ghettos, the segregation, the systemic racism that leads to a black man being unable to walk down the street in his own neighborhood without his dog and daughter for fear of being labeled an “other.”

It is the white woman in central park, screaming into phone that a black man is threatening her, as he quietly films her meltdown at being told to leash her dog in one of the few areas of New York City where it’s possible to birdwatch. He stands his ground while she calls for help, dragging her yelping, squealing dog around by its collar.

The thing is, is that there’s too many things in that past light cone to list. It’s race, it’s class, it’s history, it’s the fact that Serious Eats, food blogging site, sends out a message of support for black Americans, but acknowledges that they have no black folks on staff. Countless events have layered on top of each other to cause this one event, exploding out from the “hypersurface of the present” into the future.

The rioting, the violence, the inchoate rage of generations of people being denied entry into the halls of power is on all the channels, on all the tongues. The question is not how did this happen. All the moments that we’ve passed through in the past have led us here. Even the coronavirus lockdowns, with 40 million unemployed, no way into the security and comfort of a middle class are in there.

Quantum physics would try to suggest that there’s some kind of mechanism by which the events of the present affect the past. The reality is much more daunting. The events that are happening now are affecting the future - and it is our responsibility to recognize that, despite the looting, the violence, the cities burning, that there is a deep wound that needs our attention.