characterized his role in the HARLEM RENAISSANCE,
his fiction, and his five decades as a journalist.
Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Schuyler
soon moved to Syracuse, New York, where he grew
up in a middle-class family largely secluded from
the harshest forms of American racism. Schuyler
served in the army and worked various odd jobs
before turning to journalism in New York City,
where he would live and work for the bulk of his
life. He began his career in 1923 as a columnist
for The MESSENGER, a publication reflecting his
socialist leanings at the time. He soon joined The
Pittsburgh Courier, however, where he served as
correspondent and editor over the next four de-
cades. During this period he also wrote for nu-
merous other publications, including The Nation,
American Mercury, CRISIS, The Washington Post,
The New York Evening News, and Reader’s Digest.
Schuyler brought his scathing satirical wit to bear
on a variety of subjects, but most significantly
he addressed racism, literature, imperialism, and
communism. His writing grew increasingly anti-
communist over the years, and he eventually left
The Pittsburgh Courier to write for more conser-
vative publications. His articles criticizing Mar-
tin Luther King, Jr., and MALCOLM X earned him
a reputation as an Uncle Tom (see SAMBO AND
UNCLE TOM) and even as a race traitor. This char-
acterization has tended to overshadow his earlier
work with the NAACP, his articles attacking rac-
ism, and his fiction.
Even early in his career, Schuyler emerged
as a controversial figure during the Harlem Re-
naissance. In his essay “The Negro-Art Hokum,”
he argues that African Americans and African-
American culture are essentially the same as
white Americans and white American culture.
For Schuyler the American belief in racial differ-
ence was an obstacle to racial progress; authors,
he argued, should not take mistaken concepts of
racial difference as the basis for their art. This
faith in cultural assimilation, however, was not a
popular doctrine with many artists of the Harlem
Renaissance who were engaged in establishing
an African-American cultural identity distinct
from white America. Schuyler’s description of
the African American as “merely a lampblacked
Anglo-Saxon” and his dismissal of BLUES, jazz, and
spirituals brought a quick response from LANGS-
TON HUGHES in his famous artistic manifesto, “The
Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (1926).
Hughes criticized Schuyler and others for their
desire “to be as little Negro and as much Ameri-
can as possible” (1311). Throughout his career,
however, Schuyler defined his position differently
than Hughes had done. In his essay, “Do Negroes
Want to Be White?” (1956), for example, he as-
serts that the “goal is not to be white but to be
free in a white world” (72). Schuyler expended his
satirical energy attacking elements of both white
and black society that he saw as obstructing this
objective.
BLACK NO MORE: Being an Account of the Strange
and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of
the Free, A. D. 1933–1940 stands as Schuyler’s most
significant literary achievement. Critics commonly
cite the book as both the first satirical novel and
the first science fiction novel in the African-Amer-
ican tradition. Schuyler assaults American racism
by exploring what happens when a scientific in-
vention allows African Americans to turn them-
selves into Caucasians. More and more people
avail themselves of this “chromatic emancipation”
(87) and pass with ease into white society. It be-
comes clear that wealthy white economic interests
and skin color are the only things preventing black
participation in mainstream America. Schuyler
lambastes concepts of racial purity when a gene-
alogist reveals that the majority of Americans—
including the leading white supremacists—have
black ancestry. As a further irony, America reverses
its color obsession, and darker skin becomes the
desired norm. Even as Schuyler indicts America’s
preoccupation with skin color and the economic
causes of racism, he satirizes African-American
leaders such as MARCUS GARVEY, W. E. B. DUBOIS,
and JAMES WELDON JOHNSON as self-interested
agitators of the race problem. This willingness to
criticize race leaders as well as racism was char-
acteristic throughout Schuyler’s career. Black No
More remains an essential novel of the Harlem
Renaissance, and its satirical edge influenced laterSchuyler, George Samuel 451