So any flipping of power dynamics requires a complete rethinking of the culture these characters are supposed to inhabit - a rethinking that few creators bother with. It’s hard to create real characters under this trope, because in many ways, power defines culture. The movie is one of the more blatant examples of how works which use the persecution-flip trope often coast on the premise, assuming that the sheer perversity of the reversal will make up for the lack of interesting characters. Take the 1995 film White Man’s Burden, an unintentional comedy where Harry Belafonte’s wealthy Black character grumbles about the genetic inferiority of whites, while white factory worker John Travolta stumbles through his lines in AAVE. Any movie or show that indulges in a twist on white supremacy runs on a level of artifice that the audience can’t escape. Race-reversal alternate histories are silly, and Noughts + Crosses isn’t alone in this regard.

The vast majority of these stories don’t bring any insights into the state of modern racism at best, they have the unambitious aim of shocking white viewers into realizing that racism is, in fact, not good. Many films, shows, and books have asked the question “What if history had progressed differently enough that was the dominant group?” and a good portion of these works center around a reversal of white supremacy, where Black people take power. Noughts + Crosses (and the Malorie Blackman books it’s based on) puts a frivolous teen-romance spin on a worn-out trope: the race reversal - or “ persecution flip”-alternate history. Also, for some reason, everyone speaks English. Under the thumb of the Apricans, Albion observes an apartheid-like system where white people (“noughts”) live as second-class citizens under their African colonizers (“crosses”). In the show, which originally aired on BBC One, the Great Britain stand-in “Albion” has been conquered by the “Aprican Empire,” a powerful confederation of West African states which invaded Europe 700 years earlier.

Peacock’s recently acquired series Noughts + Crosses attempts to bring racism to the light by turning it against white people.

Lion's Blood by Steven Barnes