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George Schuyler's "Black No More" Appeared early in 1931 and accompanied with contradictory public debate on the subject of racial essences and their relation to national character, George Schuyler's Black No More immediately entered the culture and occupied distinguishable place in contemporary classic literature. Simultaneously, the plot of Black No More can be characterized as relatively simple and even obvious in the context of 1931. The story itself follows the ups and downs of Max Dishes in profiting from the work of Dr. Junius Crookman. Crookman's efforts have resulted in a treatment which lightens dark skin permanently: no bleaches or creams, and the process is "glandular" and "electrical" (Schuyler, 27).
Crookman's treatment results in effective transformation of Negro into Caucasian. However, expected amalgamation of the countrys different peoples never happens. To a black public wild to have it, Crookman's "Black-No-More" makes them not just white, but even whiter than white, too white apparently for regular white folks determined to be distinguished as such. As Crookman later naively reports, Black-No-More makes one a shade paler than garden - variety whites who reason with consequent enlightenment that "if it were true that extreme whiteness was evidence of the possession of Negro blood... then surely it were well not to be so white" (Schuyler, 219). Even though a secret research project reveals against the hopes of its sponsors that over 50 % of the "white" American population has "tainted blood" - leading one "Nordic" to admit that "we " re all niggers now" (Schuyler, 193) - a subsequent reversal and redrawing of racial boundaries ensues, made complete and authoritative with the help of churches, courts, schools, labor unions, newspapers and magazines, social and biological sciences, political and cultural organs, and all the other ideological state apparatuses integral in the erection and maintenance of a really effective oppressive system.
From the critical point of view, the story represents Schuyler's peculiar satire and the books popularity among an African-American audience at the time of its publication points the extent to which he and they were attuned to the contradictory claims made about race, class and culture in the U. S. In her work called George Schuyler: Paradox Among Assimilationist Writers Ann Rayson argues creatively that Schuyler cannot even be called an assimilationist because by the late 1960 s the world he wants to be a part of is farther to the right than the majority culture in the U. S. Rayson dates Schuyler's turn to the right a decade earlier with the Scottsboro trial and what he and many others thought was the International Labor Defenses mishandling of the defense.
Simultaneously, Rayson cites Schulers expression posted in "Views and Reviews" column for The Pittsburgh Courier in April, 1933, Schuyler derided the defenses "faulty tactics, " chief among which was its attempt to present the issues of the case in class rather than racial terms. According to Schuyler, Anybody who is at all familiar with the Southern psychology knows that no class issues are involved save of the most remote and inconsequential kind. It is a race issue pure and simple" (Rayson, 105). Simultaneously, in his article A Fragmented Man, famous literary critic Henry Gates asserts that Schuyler's depiction of the U. S. , black and white, is uniformly bleak: a world in which everyone is subject to and motivated by the same ruthless social and economic forces and out of which select winners emerge by dint of their own corresponding ruthlessness (Gates, 42). Thus, according to Gates, regardless of whatever Schuyler advocated later in life, it underestimates Schuyler's argument in Black No More to call it assimilationist, because making assimilationist arguments already presumes distinct categories of color and culture, but this would be difficult for Schuyler to do since he believed that at best, race is a superstition" (Gates, 43).
From the critical and personal point of view, in Black No More Schuyler translates the categories of racial difference and white racist discourse into economic categories where they are no longer signs of racial essences but of whether an individual has been hired at the service of U. S. capitalism. Practically, Schuyler surely understood and consequently feared that in the U. S.
more than anywhere, "wanting to be white" was all about wanting to secure this life and the national and cultural borders on which its maintenance depends. Therefore, I disagree with both Gates and Rayson, which comprehended Black No More in the trajectories of race and class, because Schuyler specifically emptied the story from racial and class meaning, emphasizing the development of the particular culture and highlighting the similarities between European and Negro. It is about cultural, not racial or class differences. Bibliography Schuyler, George. Black No More: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free, A. D. 1933 - 1940.
Boston: Northeastern UP, 1989. Rayson, Ann. "George Schuyler: Paradox Among Assimilationist Writers. " Black American Literature Forum 12, 1978: 102 - 06. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. "A Fragmented Man - George Schuyler and the Claims of Race. " Black American Writer. Troy, NY: Winston, 1991.
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Research essay sample on George Schuyler Black No More
