Post #4: Black Empire

So far, I've probably enjoyed Black Empire the most out of the three books we have read. While some of the happenings in the book are pretty damn absurd at times, it kind of helps when reading to remind myself that the novel was published serially in the Pittsburgh Courier. Due to that, I've always kind of imagined it in the same vain as a comic book. A lot of nonsensical things happen in most comic books as well, so I think that's another part of where my association comes from. And in all honesty, I think it would make a pretty great graphic novel.

Anyway, probably the most interesting thing I have found about Black Empire so far is how full of anti-white sentiments the novel is. While quite obviously the novel is completely fictional and the views of Dr. Belsidus don't necessarily represent that of George Schuyler himself, the fact of the matter is that it was still published in the 1930s. Racism and discrimination were still rampant, and while lynchings were not as common as they once were, they still happened at least semi-frequently.

Dr. Belsidus is probably the most extreme example of being anti-white I have ever of, in both fiction and real life. In fact, he murders a white women on the second page of the novel, because he "cannot tolerate failure" (p. 3). Not to mention that Belsidus has a goal to kill LITERALLY every white person in Africa. Even just the terminology used in the novel is extreme:

"They slaughtered white men, women, and children with great ferocity." (p. 129)

"Taken completely by surprise, the 40,000 or 50,000 whites in West Africa had been exterminated as quickly by the infuriated natives as had the whites in East Africa and the million whites in South Africa." (p.127)

One of the best examples I thought of off the top of my head is simply the title of chapter 18: "Belsidus Prepares to Wipe Out Two "Crackers" Who Know Too Much." I know the word "cracker" doesn't hold even close to as much weight as most other racial slurs, (nor did I know the term was even that old), but again, it was the 1930s. That was bound to piss someone off. Just think if the novel was published today, but replace the word "Cracker" with the n-word. How do you think the NAACP would feel about that?

Something that's interesting to note is that, at least according to Black Empire's Wikipedia page, Schuyler published each chapter under the pseudonym Samuel I. Brooks. One can assume that he possibly published the serial novel under a pseudonym in case the anti-white sentiments caused too much of a ruckus and caught the attention from hate-groups such as the KKK. After all, black americans had been lynched for much less throughout history, and it's not like KKK members really needed a reason to want to lynch someone other than the fact that they were black in the first place.