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queenluaThis is an extremely random book selection, I know. I can explain.
So I saw a review of George Schuyler’s Black No More, which is known as the first science fiction novel published by an African-American. I thought: wow, I’m a scifi fan and yet I’ve never heard of this one? That seems messed up; I should give it a look.
Then I read up on the author and what I discovered was so interesting: regarded as “the black H.L. Mencken,” Schuyler was a noted, widely-published satirist with a multi-decade career; he started out in the socialist party in the 1920s but became a hyperconservative pundit and big Nixon fan in the 1960s—
What?
I find weird contrarians absolutely fascinating, I find people who radically change their viewpoints during their lifetime fascinating, and I love H.L. Mencken, so. I had to get my hands on some of this dude’s essays, and this collection fit the bill perfectly. And the collection got here before the novel, so: here we are.
The book is structured chronologically, and the essays are chosen to show the fullness of Schuyler’s movement from “lefty socialist party member” to “bitter angry conservative who can’t get his acerbic rant about MLK Jr published anywhere,” and that alone makes it interesting as a life/intellectual journey.
Early Schuyler is an absolute delight to read; his savage critiques of late capitalism would fit right in on Tumblr if Tumblr had, uh, even an ounce of good humor. Which it does not, alas, so Schuyler’s sarcastic potshots at the Rotary Club, predatory mortgages, Christian Scientists, the YMCA, and so much more, shall remain ever betwixt these pages.
Middle Schuyler, you get the impression he was drifting a bit to the right, but you also get the sense he suffered from context collapse / tone deafness, of a sort? For instance: there’s two essays in the middle book, back-to-back, written only a year apart, right?
The first essay (1949) tears into the racist policies that hold back black advancement in the north, as a stern reminder to white Yankees that the north has plenty of racist institutions, and they don’t get a pass simply by being not-the-South. (Basically all of Schuyler’s arguments could’ve come straight from Rothstein’s The Color of Law, which is a sort of depressing indicator of how long racist housing policies have been attacked with so little change.)
The latter essay (1950), by contrast, heaps praises upon the remarkable gains black Americans have had since 1900, pointing to encouraging trendlines and statistics on black homeownership, black university enrollment, black per capita income, and so on, essentially arguing that, while America has much room for improvement in how it treats its black population, it’s doing better than everywhere else. You can see why Schuyler aggravated his peers with this speech—harping on “but isn’t it great that some rich generous white dudes funded some black universities” is, uh, not reading the room in 1950, to put it mildly. But Schuyler was reacting to what he saw as a far greater evil, and like, Soviet totalitarianism did kill a lot of people; while his concern is a bit hysterical it’s not unjustifiable.
By the time you’re reading Schuyler’s later essays, you get the sense that Schuyler’s bitterest disappointment wasn’t the historic injustices black Americans suffered (though he was disappointed in those!), so much as the seemingly-intractable rift it created between black and white America—in a sort of “once, we could’ve repaired the divide and become a genuinely multiracial society, but managing that seems hopeless now” sort of way. And yeah, from there on you get to watch a weird decline, from “centrist” to “kind of boring conservative” to “no one would publish his pissy essay when MLK Jr won the Nobel Peace Prize because it was too batshit for even the standard conservative publications.”
Popping back a bit: the middle section of the book also includes a fascinating transcript of a radio panel discussion between Schuyler, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and C. Eric Lincoln, which like, geez, talk about a set of intellectual/political heavyweights. Observation one: is it just me or could you get away with a higher level of discussion on the radio back in the day? The discussion here is passionate, but respectful and articulate throughout, a far cry from the talk radio I grew up with. (Though, uh, I didn’t exactly grow up in an NPR household, and nowadays podcasts are a thing, so...) Observation two: Malcolm X is intensely evasive whenever he’s asked a question in this panel. I honestly don’t know enough about Malcolm X’s life/work or the context around it to comment further, though I’m now quite curious to learn more about him (and honestly the Wikipedia article alone was enough to pique one’s interest, like: if you have not read up on him before: his life story is wilder than you thought, probably!).
Also, finally: every time I read about early-1900s lefties there’s always!! some goddamn!! eugenics!! You might think you’d be able to avoid that in, uh, a book by a black author? or at least you may find a lefty arguing against eugenics? But nah, Schuyler was pretty into eugenics for a while, in a sort of weird way—
See, George Schuyler married a white woman, a Texas heiress, and they lived together Harlem, right? When their daughter was born, it was announced in all the newspapers, as a bit of a celebrity thing, and when it turned out his daughter was a brilliant prodigy, the parents described it as “hybrid vigor”, the Schuylers “believed that their commitment to the concept of hybridization or eugenics would produce ‘a new order’,” and so on.
And on the one hand: it comes from an understandable place, kinda? Like, Schuyler clearly wants more unions like his own to be possible, and he’s responding to a society that virulently loathes such unions, so maybe his funky rationalization of “actually my kids will be SUPERIOR” is a bit of a defensive overreaction but ultimately harmless?
But still. Yikes. Eugenics. Kinda glad that that’s a thing the left no longer really fucks with.
Oh, finally—huge props to the editor, whose introduction offered a really solid overview of Schuyler’s life with all kinds of fascinating tidbits (while Schuyler was in the army, he was refused service in a diner due to his skin color, and he got so angry off he went AWOL for three months—he apparently told this story to basically no one during his life, and got out of prison early on good behavior, but yeah, kind of a wild story given where his politics ended up in the end). Said editor also has a really helpful introduction for each essay that puts it in the piece in context—I was especially amused when he pointed out that one of Schuyler’s most acerbic rants was targeting a man who had previously beaten Schuyler out in a run for political office—lil’ subtext of you bitter much, dude? And uh, yeah. Schuyler’s bitter, haha.
eta: oh gosh i didn't even get into Schuyler's beef with Marcus Garvey and the whole Liberia research trip thing??? there's just. there's a LOT happening in this book. Schuyler just covered a lot of stuff in his life. he is a lot
tl;dr fun collection of essays from a reliably witty and incisive dude—obviously i didn’t agree with all of them (that’d be kind of impossible, given the span of viewpoints it covers!), but definitely interesting as a historical document
So I saw a review of George Schuyler’s Black No More, which is known as the first science fiction novel published by an African-American. I thought: wow, I’m a scifi fan and yet I’ve never heard of this one? That seems messed up; I should give it a look.
Then I read up on the author and what I discovered was so interesting: regarded as “the black H.L. Mencken,” Schuyler was a noted, widely-published satirist with a multi-decade career; he started out in the socialist party in the 1920s but became a hyperconservative pundit and big Nixon fan in the 1960s—
What?
I find weird contrarians absolutely fascinating, I find people who radically change their viewpoints during their lifetime fascinating, and I love H.L. Mencken, so. I had to get my hands on some of this dude’s essays, and this collection fit the bill perfectly. And the collection got here before the novel, so: here we are.
The book is structured chronologically, and the essays are chosen to show the fullness of Schuyler’s movement from “lefty socialist party member” to “bitter angry conservative who can’t get his acerbic rant about MLK Jr published anywhere,” and that alone makes it interesting as a life/intellectual journey.
Early Schuyler is an absolute delight to read; his savage critiques of late capitalism would fit right in on Tumblr if Tumblr had, uh, even an ounce of good humor. Which it does not, alas, so Schuyler’s sarcastic potshots at the Rotary Club, predatory mortgages, Christian Scientists, the YMCA, and so much more, shall remain ever betwixt these pages.
Middle Schuyler, you get the impression he was drifting a bit to the right, but you also get the sense he suffered from context collapse / tone deafness, of a sort? For instance: there’s two essays in the middle book, back-to-back, written only a year apart, right?
The first essay (1949) tears into the racist policies that hold back black advancement in the north, as a stern reminder to white Yankees that the north has plenty of racist institutions, and they don’t get a pass simply by being not-the-South. (Basically all of Schuyler’s arguments could’ve come straight from Rothstein’s The Color of Law, which is a sort of depressing indicator of how long racist housing policies have been attacked with so little change.)
The latter essay (1950), by contrast, heaps praises upon the remarkable gains black Americans have had since 1900, pointing to encouraging trendlines and statistics on black homeownership, black university enrollment, black per capita income, and so on, essentially arguing that, while America has much room for improvement in how it treats its black population, it’s doing better than everywhere else. You can see why Schuyler aggravated his peers with this speech—harping on “but isn’t it great that some rich generous white dudes funded some black universities” is, uh, not reading the room in 1950, to put it mildly. But Schuyler was reacting to what he saw as a far greater evil, and like, Soviet totalitarianism did kill a lot of people; while his concern is a bit hysterical it’s not unjustifiable.
By the time you’re reading Schuyler’s later essays, you get the sense that Schuyler’s bitterest disappointment wasn’t the historic injustices black Americans suffered (though he was disappointed in those!), so much as the seemingly-intractable rift it created between black and white America—in a sort of “once, we could’ve repaired the divide and become a genuinely multiracial society, but managing that seems hopeless now” sort of way. And yeah, from there on you get to watch a weird decline, from “centrist” to “kind of boring conservative” to “no one would publish his pissy essay when MLK Jr won the Nobel Peace Prize because it was too batshit for even the standard conservative publications.”
Popping back a bit: the middle section of the book also includes a fascinating transcript of a radio panel discussion between Schuyler, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and C. Eric Lincoln, which like, geez, talk about a set of intellectual/political heavyweights. Observation one: is it just me or could you get away with a higher level of discussion on the radio back in the day? The discussion here is passionate, but respectful and articulate throughout, a far cry from the talk radio I grew up with. (Though, uh, I didn’t exactly grow up in an NPR household, and nowadays podcasts are a thing, so...) Observation two: Malcolm X is intensely evasive whenever he’s asked a question in this panel. I honestly don’t know enough about Malcolm X’s life/work or the context around it to comment further, though I’m now quite curious to learn more about him (and honestly the Wikipedia article alone was enough to pique one’s interest, like: if you have not read up on him before: his life story is wilder than you thought, probably!).
Also, finally: every time I read about early-1900s lefties there’s always!! some goddamn!! eugenics!! You might think you’d be able to avoid that in, uh, a book by a black author? or at least you may find a lefty arguing against eugenics? But nah, Schuyler was pretty into eugenics for a while, in a sort of weird way—
See, George Schuyler married a white woman, a Texas heiress, and they lived together Harlem, right? When their daughter was born, it was announced in all the newspapers, as a bit of a celebrity thing, and when it turned out his daughter was a brilliant prodigy, the parents described it as “hybrid vigor”, the Schuylers “believed that their commitment to the concept of hybridization or eugenics would produce ‘a new order’,” and so on.
And on the one hand: it comes from an understandable place, kinda? Like, Schuyler clearly wants more unions like his own to be possible, and he’s responding to a society that virulently loathes such unions, so maybe his funky rationalization of “actually my kids will be SUPERIOR” is a bit of a defensive overreaction but ultimately harmless?
But still. Yikes. Eugenics. Kinda glad that that’s a thing the left no longer really fucks with.
Oh, finally—huge props to the editor, whose introduction offered a really solid overview of Schuyler’s life with all kinds of fascinating tidbits (while Schuyler was in the army, he was refused service in a diner due to his skin color, and he got so angry off he went AWOL for three months—he apparently told this story to basically no one during his life, and got out of prison early on good behavior, but yeah, kind of a wild story given where his politics ended up in the end). Said editor also has a really helpful introduction for each essay that puts it in the piece in context—I was especially amused when he pointed out that one of Schuyler’s most acerbic rants was targeting a man who had previously beaten Schuyler out in a run for political office—lil’ subtext of you bitter much, dude? And uh, yeah. Schuyler’s bitter, haha.
eta: oh gosh i didn't even get into Schuyler's beef with Marcus Garvey and the whole Liberia research trip thing??? there's just. there's a LOT happening in this book. Schuyler just covered a lot of stuff in his life. he is a lot
tl;dr fun collection of essays from a reliably witty and incisive dude—obviously i didn’t agree with all of them (that’d be kind of impossible, given the span of viewpoints it covers!), but definitely interesting as a historical document
no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 03:17 am (UTC)(Other even earlier Black speculative fiction on my to-read list include Imperium in Imperio by Sutton Elbert Griggs, and Light Ahead for the Negro by Edward A. Johnson, if you're looking for more!)
no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 05:31 am (UTC)(and i mean, minor note but wouldn't really call eugenics over - there's still a bit in that blurry line between acceptable level of disabilities in unborn versus not. absolutely would grant that it's a rough as hell/not easy to pinpoint definite 'most humane' stances all over, buuut yea.)
tho had to laugh @ the shade with the understandable bitterness what with being best by the political opposition, it's life's flavors like that that are so endearing to read, petty grudges and all.
dude sounded like a character. :o kinda want to be on that level of no fucks given on some levels.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 05:51 am (UTC)(and, yeah, definitely point taken wrt eugenics not being *over*. poor phrasing on my part; definitely still an issue today, in a different shape.)
and re: no fucks given: NOT TO SPOIL ANYTHING, but, in the last section of the book? Ishmael Reed interviews old!Schuyler, and is like, "hey can you tell me about that time you kept a gun by your desk in the newspaper office because you were getting picketed?"
Schuyler's response is confused: "Which time was that? I've been picketed so many times; it's hard to tell them all apart."
like, damn that dude was inured to stuff, lol