Back around 92/93, while travelling in a van I heard an author interviewed on FEN (Far East Network – for US forces in Japan and the surrounding bases). He was being interviewed about a collection of short stories the name of which I did get and his name I didn’t get. I wasn’t in control of the radio sadly.
One story he spoke about involved aliens coming to earth and asking to take all the black people away in exchange for something, peace, technology, a threat to kill us all, I don’t recall. And how the people of the world including the US held a vote and decided that yep they could all go. The aliens never say why they wanted the black people, for good or ill. And the story was meant to be primarily about how the underlying desire in the US for the race problem to just go away.
I’m not sure if Russell T. Davies read that story or was inspired by it for this season of Torchwood but I have to say it’s bloody good television all the same.