Race According to Black No More: Entertaining a Paradox

Black No More by George Schuyler is a satirical novel about the racial question in America. Set in the 1930s, where Depression-Age scandals and get rich quick schemes abounded, the novel examines the social and economic implications of the question: what if everyone in America had the opportunity to be the same color? Schuyler uses irony, the conflict of appearance and reality, and a humorous tone to ultimately define race as a maddening paradox.

Matthew (Max) Fisher is the story’s protagonist. He and his friend, Bunny Brown, start their journey in a New York nightclub. Max has an interest in white women, and he is rejected by a beautiful white woman, who does not care to associate with black people. Despite the rejection, Max desires to be with the woman, but despairs over how to woo her. Max’s solution comes when he reads about a new scientific process that can change black skin to white skin. Black No More, Incorporated, started by a black man, Doctor Junius Crookman, sets up a center in Harlem, and Max is the first customer. After selling his story to a magazine for $1000, Matthew the white man journeys south to spend his money and to look for the woman who rejected him. Matthew is soon forced to look for work and stumbles upon a new white-supremacist organization, the Knights of Nordica. He presents himself to the organization’s leader, Reverend Givens, as an anthropologist. Givens is impressed with Matthew allows him to join the staff of the organization. Coincidentally, Givens’ daughter, Helen, is the woman Matthew has been searching for. Helen is instantly attracted to the intelligent wealthy young man, and they are soon married. The organization’s leaders grow in wealth and influence through graft and corruption. Matthew shrewdly milks his position as he scams and leans on people and collects bribes. Meanwhile, the nation’s black population shrinks to the point of near-extinction as Black No More, Incorporated opens up clinics all over the country. Bunny Brown, also whitened, locates Matthew and joins in the leadership of the Knights of Nordica. There is a glitch in the process of “getting white:” the offspring of a whitened black person are still black. This glitch affects Matthew very personally when he discovers his wife is pregnant. In a desperate attempt to conceal his identity, Matthew has his house burned down so that his wife will have a stress-induced miscarriage. White supremacist groups from all over the country, playing on the fear of the whitened black population, enter the presidential election on the Democratic ticket, with Reverend Givens as their presidential candidate. During this time, Helen conceives again, and Matthew plans to reveal his identity when she has his black child. A Democratic victory seems inevitable when damning research proving that the Democratic candidates have black ancestors is printed. Helen has her baby, and Matthew is about to confess the truth when the news breaks; the campaign instantly collapses, and the candidates, Matthew, Helen, their child, and Bunny flee from mobs. The vice presidential candidate and his assistant are lynched by a white town. Matthew, his family, and his friend escape the country and live happily ever after. It is later discovered that the whitened black population is actually whiter than the white population, and therefore everyone with fair skin is suspected. Darkening treatments become popular as a way of preventing prejudice based on skin color.

The conflict of appearance versus reality and irony are the main rhetorical devices that Schuyler uses throughout his novel. Matthew and his fellow converts all appear to be to be a race they are not. Even their old black friends are unable to recognize them. The whitened blacks adopt lifestyles that they could not have enjoyed as black people because of discrimination and economic disadvantages; they also meet and associate with people they could not have as black people. The most prominent case of such new freedom is Matthew meeting and eventually marrying Helen. When Matthew has dark skin, Helen rejects him, but after he is turned white, she readily accepts him. Matthew’s original perception of Helen conflicts with what he later discovers when he gets to know her. When Matthew first sees Helen, he sees a beautiful, sophisticated, and intelligent young woman. When Matthew meets Helen he still sees her beauty, but he also discovers that she is small-minded, materialistic, selfish, racist, and quite stupid. It is ironic that Matthew, a whitened black man, is able to become part of the leadership of a white supremacist group. Schuyler thoroughly describes the men who lead the dwindling equal rights groups to show the conflict between their perceived intentions and their actual actions. The activist leaders portray themselves as co-sufferers with the downtrodden black population. They are really part-black wealthy fat-cats who anticipate discrimination and displeasure so they can write scathing articles and petitions for donations. Most of the donated money goes to support their lavish lifestyles.

Ironic situations abound in Black No More. Throughout the novel, Matthew is in constant danger of having his true identity discovered. The reader knows that he is really a black man with whitened skin, but none of his acquaintances, except for his fellow convert Bunny Brown, know the truth. When this problem comes to a head at the climax of the story, it is solved in an ironic fashion. Matthew knows he will have to reveal his true identity at the birth of his child; just as he is about to confess, the news breaks. The Democratic candidates, who are about to win the election after campaigning on a platform of white supremacy, are discovered to have black ancestors. They are not the “pure” whites that they thought themselves to be. Reverend Givens readily accepts the dark child with the thought that since he had black ancestors, recessive traits must now be manifesting themselves in Helen and Matthew’s child. Helen actually apologizes to Matthew for bearing a dark child.

The situation that results in the lynching of the vice presidential candidate, Arthur Snobbcraft, is also ironic. Snobbcraft flees from the mobs upset by the news of his black heritage. Upon ditching his escape plane in the Deep South state of Mississippi, he paints the visible parts of his body black to conceal his identity. He comes upon a town that is famous for its black lynching record. To avoid lynching, Snobbcraft removes his shirt to show his white skin. Satisfied that he is not black, the town allows him to wash off the paint. Snobbcraft appears to be safe until a man in the town recognizes the vice presidential candidate from a newspaper describing his black heritage. Enthused to be able to kill a black man after all, the town promptly lynches Snobbcraft.

The novel concludes in an ironic fashion. The whitened black population is found to have skin that is several shades paler than the skin of typical Caucasians. White people, fearing incognito black people, begin to suspect and discriminate against everyone with paler skin. To avoid discrimination, the people with paler skin buy skin darkening pigments. The darkened pale people now appear darker than the white people, so the white people now want to get darker to avoid discrimination and suspicion. The process escalates until it becomes popular to have happy medium-minded mulatto-colored skin.

Through his use of highly ironic situations and the conflict of appearance versus reality, Schuyler creates a facetious tone. The situations that the characters are in are serious to the characters, but they are funny to the reader. The reader can see the hilarious deception behind each scam and situation and can see the foolishness of the duped. The irony of a white sumpremacist being lynched by a white mob or a white woman apologizing to a black man for bearing him a dark baby is humorous. The outlandishly ironic nature of many of the novel’s scenes produces constant laughs.

Throughout the novel it seems that the race problem in America will be solved through science, but in the end, Schuyler portrays the problem as a paradox: race cannot be defined by appearance or descent. In the beginning, the black people turned white because they were judged based on their appearance. Then it was found that the white people were not as white as they thought they were because they had black ancestors. At the end of the novel, people suspect pale people of being whitened black people by judging their appearance. The judgment of race shifts from judging race based on appearance, to judging it by descent, to judging racial heritage based on appearance. Schuyler implies that since race essentially eludes definition, it should be disregarded. The happiest people at the end of the novel are Matthew, his family, and his friend. These people have stopped trying to define race and judge by it. They have learned to look deeper than the color and ancestry of a person; they have learned to examine that which makes us people, our personalities and souls.