Game Of Thrones showrunners Dan Weiss and David Benioff had a dilemma on their hands as they conceptualized how the hit HBO series’ third season would end. The season had been incredibly depressing with the gory Red Wedding and Theon’s transformation into Reek thanks to a seemingly never-ending array of torture scenes. The duo figured they should end the season on a high note. They decided to have a happy ending for fans by having the recently-freed brown people of Slaver’s Bay literally lifting blonde-haired, blue-eyed white woman Daenerys Targaryen in the air praising her for giving them liberation. The audience was supposed to feel a newfound feeling of hope thanks to the white savior.

That infamous White Woman Salvation March at Slaver’s Bay is the first thing I thought about when I saw the news that Weiss and Benioff’s next venture is going to be a show called Confederate about an alternate reality in which slavery never ended in the American South. The show has rightfully come under fire for continuing a tradition of white people only being able to find stories about black people if they’re framed by the institution of slavery, oppression and trauma.

The idea for Confederate illustrates an issue white people have always had when constructing narratives about us. They simply can’t imagine us without shackles.

Weiss and Benioff have been able to bring to life a land of dragons, time travelers, zombies and fire gods, but they are incapable of imagining a world without racial class divisions and enslaved people of color. That sort of existence is outside of the realm of their creativity.

Of course, the show creators are simply being true to the source material provided by George R. R. Martin, who devised the multifaceted Throne world from scratch. And even he felt the need to make brown savages out of the Dothraki and a place named Slaver’s Bay full of brown folks. So Martin, equipped with the power to essentially play God to his own universe, couldn’t expunge his desire to create subjugated people based on race.

That’s how ingrained racial constructs are in Martin. When given free reign, he still couldn’t perceive of a world in which black people aren’t treated worse than everyone else. So often black folks are asked why we can’t get over slavery or racism but it’s as ever-present in white lives as it is ours, to the point that people like Martin, Weiss and Benioff can’t think of life any other way.

I fully understand that Weiss and Benioff wanted to stay true to Martin’s vision for the show but what about the characters’ race made them have to stay as portrayed in the books? Obviously due to questions of maternity in regards to Jon Snow, Targaryens and Baratheons there’s probably a need to maintain racial continuity to maintain mystery. But why can’t Dorne be full of black people? What about House Clegane? Ser Jorah and his father? Just this past week it was revealed that the show runners had turned Game of Thrones oldest bit of folklore of, The Prince That Was Promised, into an androgynous meaning. But having a black woman play Brienne was too far outside of Weiss and Benioff’s consideration. And all of the black characters who have shown up in the show have traced their lineage to the slavery of Essos. For every J. K. Rowling who has no problem changing characters’ races for adaptations, there are far too many white people who can’t even consider the possibility.

Of course all of the racial homogeny can be somewhat forgiven if not colored by the development of Confederate. Weiss and Benioff have been able to hide behind the tried excuse that they were simply putting forward the material they were given. But now the Confederate makes past prologue. Weiss and Benioff have put together HBO’s biggest show ever and had a green light to develop any show they wanted. And it’s clear they wanted to do a show involving more people of color. And, like Martin, given free reign to birth any universe they wanted, the best idea they could come up with for black people is to keep them enslaved. Imagine that.

And imagine the amount of clueless white privilege it takes to think it takes creating an alternate universe to address modern day slavery in America. It’s also telling tha idea about Africans enslaving Europeans didn’t come about or even black people getting reparations after slavery. Instead, we get a Jeff Sessions fever dream of continued slavery.

In the end, Confederate will probably be a compelling, well-executed show. Weiss and Benioff are geniuses enough to pull that off. But that’s not really the point. What matters is that even for white people as creative as Dan Weiss and David Benioff — who have spent nearly a decade bringing the unimaginable to life — the idea of a world without black subjugation, black death and black suffrage is too far beyond the limits of their imagination.