"Black No More" and Afrofuturism

For this post, I want to discuss Black No More, by George S. Schuyler.  This novel was written in 1931 and aimed to expose some of the hypocrisy of society in its time.  This is something that Butler does as well, but Schuyler does it in a blatant, satirical way.  Also, it’s a riot.

The full title is Black No More: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free, AD 1933-1940.  The novel is about a machine that turns black people into white people.  Dr. Crookman, who invented the machine, brings it to New York City and opens a business, “Black No More, Incorporated”, which offers the service of making black people white.  The service becomes wildly popular instantly and the novel follows the life of Max Disher, the first black man to use the machine.  

Schuyler uses blatant contradiction throughout the text to point out the hypocrisy of certain views of the time.  For example, Madame Sisseretta Blandish, a black character who is a satirical portrait of Madame C. J. Walker, is “elected for the fourth time a Vice-President of the American Race Pride League” while her business is described as “making Negroes appear as much like white folks as possible” (59).  Like Madame C. J. Walker, Blandish’s business is skin whiteners and hair straightening products.  Another example is Dr. Crookman, who is considered a “Race Man” because he is “so interested in the continued progress of the American Negroes that he wanted to remove all obstacles in their path by depriving them of their racial characteristics” altogether(55).  The “National Social Equality League” provides another example as they are “eager to end all oppression and persecution of the Negro” but also “never so happy and excited as when a Negro was barred from a theater or friend to a crisp” because it kept them in business.  These examples concern the hypocrisy within the black community but there are plenty characterized in the book of the white community as well.   

This text is Afrofuturistic because it uses science fiction to complicate the color line and explore the issues of racism and internalized racism.  Eshun states, “Afrofuturism’s specificity lies in assembling conceptual approaches and countermemorial mediated practices in order to access triple consciousness, quadruple consciousness, previously inaccessible alienations” (298).  Schuyler does exactly this; by messing with his characters ability to make race equal identity he forces them to define themselves in other ways.

A Multi-Layered Discussion Question for "Adulthood Rights"

The beginning of the novel describes in detail a birth from the perspective of the child. What is the effect of such an intimate depiction? How does this first ineraction with Akin, the protagonist, make the reader feel about him and what sorts of expectations does it set him up for? How does birth function as a motif in the series as a whole?

A Close Reading of a Passage from "Clay's Ark"

Excerpt:

“He had hidden for five days and two nights, had wandered for nearly three nights with no destination, no goal but food, water, and human companionship.  During this time he killed jack rabbits, ate raw splashing their blood over his ragged coverall, drinking as much of it as he could.  But he had found little water.

Now he could smell water the way a dog or a horse might.  This was no longer a new sensation.  He had become accustomed to using his senses in ways not normally thought human.  In his own mind, his humanity had been in question for some time.” (Clay’s Ark, 457)

This passage, at the very start of this novel, caught my eye because it deals with the humanity of the subject.  I’ve noticed that Octavia Butler is very interested in human nature and what it means to be human.  She screws with the humanity of almost every one of her characters, in fact.  So, on the first page of Clay’s Ark she introduces a character and immediately, before even telling the reader his name, she has him drinking blood and splashing it on himself and then goes on to call into question his humanity.  

This being the last published book in the series or the third if read chronologically, readers are likely prepared to look for psionic characters.  But this ability, heightened smell, is new in Butler’s work and it comes as a shock when the reader later learns that the ability is actually the symptom of an extra-terrestrial, ultra-infectious disease.  

Within the gruesome scene and revealing of his ability, Butler does add a hint that the subject does retain some of his humanity when she describes one of his only goals as “human companionship”.  The reader can relate to this desire, giving them one reason to like the subject.  But there is also reason to mistrust him and I found myself withholding deciding if I liked him or not.  In fact, I found myself struggling with that decision the entire book.  Butler continuously makes it very difficult to decide which characters to admire and which to despise.  

I also think it of note that Butler compares his ability to that of an animal.  Throughout the series she calls into question what it means to be human in comparison with animals.  I wonder if she wants to challenge the idea that humans are so different than animals.  

Discussion Question:

How does Butler question what it means to be human through the characters of “Clay’s Ark”?

I realize it is a broad and seemingly simple question, but I found myself struggling to make sense of it in writing this post. 

A Close Reading of a Passage from "Wild Seed"

Excerpt:

“Haven’t you seed the men slaves in this country who are used for breeding?  They are never permitted to learn what it means to be a man.  They are not permitted to care for their children.  Among my people, children are wealth, they are better than money, better than anything.  But to these men, warped and twisted by their masters, children are almost nothing.  They are to boast of to other men.  One thinks he is greater than another because he has more children.  Both exaggerate the number of women who have borne them children, neither is doing anything a father should for his children, and the master who is indifferently selling off his own brown children is laughing and saying, ‘You see? Niggers are just like animals!’ Slavery down here opens one’s eyes, Doro.  How could I want such a life for my son?” (Wild Seed, 195)

In this passage Anyanwu is pleading with Doro about her son.  She is drawing a connection between how slave owners treat their slaves and how Doro treats the people he breeds.  She is particularly trying to point out the effects of that treatment.  She first refers to how the slaves are used for “breeding”, which is the word Doro uses to describe his own work.  She then claims they are not even real men because they are never permitted to be real fathers to their children.  Doro’s practices are similar.  For example, Anyanwu herself was forced to mate with many men that were not her husband and conceive a child that would never know their biological father.  

Anyanwu goes on to say that children are the most important thing to her and her people.  This is something Doro should understand well, for the only people he appears to care about are his children.  Only a select few of them are chosen to be his confidants but for them he feels something like love, if not love itself.  Anyanwu claims that the slaves are “warped and twisted by their masters”, implying those that Doro breeds are similarly manipulated.  These words “warped” and “twisted” have particularly bad connotations, being associated with the idea of being against nature or god.  Anyanwu next says that the slave father’s indifference toward their children reinforces the cultural myth upheld at the time that slaves were no better than animals.  This myth dehumanized slaves, justifying the treatment of slaves for slave owners.  But through dehumanizing treatment, slaves were conditioned to act in ways that reinforced the myth, making it a kind of a self-fulfilling cultural myth.  This realization, for me, demonstrates further what an incredible uphill battle the abolitionist movement had and how amazingly strong the leaders of it must have been.  

I think Anyanwu’s underlying warning is that people live up to their expectations; they are influenced by how people treat them.  Anyanwu’s argument is that there is nothing inherently anti-fatherly about a male slave, but that they are conditioned to animalistic indifference to their children through animalistic breeding.  She accuses Doro of tampering with the very humanness of his people in a similar way.  

The practice of slavery shows up throughout the story.  It is set in a historical time when slavery runs rampant throughout the world and particularly in America.  But, Doro can also be seen as a slave master to his people or his slaves.  He is the embodiment of power and uses fear tactics, like traditional slave owners, to keep control over his people.  Furthermore, the majority of his people are merely means to an end for him; much like a traditional slave owner he completely uses them.  

Discussion Question:

If Doro embodies the slave master, does Anyanwu embody the abolitionist movement because she continuously opposes Doro throughout the novel?  Is my reading way to ‘good vs. evil’ here?  Are there any redeeming qualities of Doro?