Black No More

Schuyler, George. "Black No More." The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David L. Lewis. New York: Viking Penguin, 1994. 655-66. Print.

Three references came to mind when reading this excerpt: Catch-22, the third X-Men movie, and the Dr. Seuss book where the creatures have machines to give them stars on their bellies. The second two references are obvious, and Catch-22 comes to mind simply because of the overtly sarcastic satire. I really enjoyed reading this except, and I plan on getting the full novel soon. My favorite satirical image in it is the Marcus Garvey character (who would have thought), with the Du Bois reference coming in a close second. Schuyler really hits the nail on the head in his depictions of the NAACP consisting of white and mostly white men who are trying to aid and assist blacks that they have no contact with. The readings for this week have been leading to this kind of realization, and I have to agree that much of the work done during the Renaissance was a load of hot air. My previous post goes into a lot of detail about how I feel about this. I’m curious to learn more about how whites and black reacted to this novel, and particularly how the Harlem literati reacted to the caricatures of themselves.