George Schuylers Black No More - Book Report/Review Example

Helen's refusal of Max's advances so irritates him that he decides he must win her. The next day he learns that an old friend, Dr. Junius Crookman, has returned from Germany with a discovery of what he naively believes to be the solution to "the American race problem." This discovery could possibly do "what agitation, education and legislation had failed to do" (Schuyler, 54-55). The brilliant African American doctor has come to such a conclusion because, from his studies of vitiligo - a disorder in skin pigmentation - he has succeeded in perfecting a process which allows him to be able to artificially induce and stimulate "this nervous disease at will.

" Consequently, through "electrical nutrition and glandular control" (Schuyler, 27), black skin is changed to white and kinky hair made straight. Thus, Max becomes the first volunteer to undergo the skin-and-hair-altering process so that he can look for the girl who bluntly and disdainfully snubbed him and rejected his request for a dance at the Harlem nightclub.In "Black No More" George Schuyler eventually transforms Max Disher to Matthew Fisher. However, Matthew Fisher's denial of his blackness deprives him of openly admiring African and African-derived forms of artistic media such as music-making and dancing.

After having dispossessed himself of what Malcolm X calls "the Negro soul," what is left for Mathew Fisher, the white outsider in the midst of an African American cultural activity, is just a reflection on past memories. He can only remember the "joy and abandon," the "sensuousness" of African American dancing, and the gayness with which they enjoyed themselves "in the black-and-tan resorts in Harlem" (Schuyler, 40). Yet, the feeling of "a momentary pang of mingled disgust, disillusionment, and nostalgia" (Schuyler, 40) are not compelling enough to persuade him to either revert his identity or to openly identify with these distinctive "racial gifts" that he has forsaken.

Helen marries Mat after she is falsely made to believe that he embodies all the characteristics she ever wanted in a companion. Mat is confronted in "Black No More" by facing his wife Helen with the truth about his identity after she gives birth to their mulatto child. But in an ironic twist, Helen, "the worst racist," is forced to have a change of heart because she just learned that she has "tainted blood" by the Anglo-Saxon Association of America's study of family trees. She is forced to accept him not because she loves blacks but because she is one herself.

She consoles herself with the fact that "[t]hey had money and a beautiful brown baby." She is however now ready to condemn the world for its racist attitude: "To hell with the world! To hell with society!" (Schuyler, 192-93). But since it is either too late or too difficult for the white society in "Black No More" to change or tolerate racial differences, Mat flees to Europe with his family where they are supposedly safe from being persecuted by the advocates of white racial purity. Obviously, Schuyler's approach in Black No More conclusively proves the impossibility of attaining a society; an ideal utopian social world.

Mat's escape with his family to Europe is clearly an unambiguous message about the persistent colorphobia in a society where the social order makes no room for one's race, but determines whether one lives or dies based on one's identity.