“Hokum and Hack Work” as Crucible for Black Utopian Development: Tracing the Blueprint in George Schuyler’s Anti-Utopian Black Empire

Abstract

“Hokum and Hack Work” as Crucible for Black Utopian Development: Tracing the Blueprint in George Schuyler’s Anti-Utopian Black Empire Christopher Allen Varlack (bio) The concept of the Black utopia is one deeply rooted in the African-American literary tradition, explored in science fiction and Afrofuturist works by authors dedicated to envisioning potential counter-futures1 for African and African-descended peoples untainted by the problematic notions of white supremacy and the traumas of repeated anti-Black violence across history. This includes landmark works such as Martin Delany’s 1859 Blake; or the Huts of America, W. E. B. Du Bois’ 1928 Dark Princess, and Octavia E. Butler’s 1993 Parable of the Sower, to name just a few. While “literary utopias have been written predominantly by white men and (to a lesser extent) women” (Veselá 270), the opportunity to erase the color line and to combat the systems of white supremacy that seemed so deeply ingrained in the social, economic, and identity politics of their time moved, and continues to move, Black writers to create in fiction what BIPOC have struggled to create in life, aided by science, technology, and an undying drive for race progress. The history of these projects is catalogued in part in scholarly works such as Landscapes of Hope: Anti-Colonial Utopianism in America (2009) by Dohra Ahmad as well as Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism (2019) by Alex Zamalin. Each acknowledges the importance of such Black-authored visions of “collective life and racial identity,” for these novels “outlined futuristic ways of being. They warned about the disastrous ways of contemporary life, while espousing radical notions of freedom. . . . They theorized what was scientifically improbable and the new black citizen that seemed impossible” (Zamalin 1). They created that possibility and envisioned a pathway for bringing their utopias to life. [End Page 74] In his engagement with the concept of the Black utopia in fiction, George S. Schuyler—a conservative Black satirist—devoted his work partly to challenging the United States’s obsession with race and not just with the white hegemonic structures in place that consistently work to keep African-American peoples oppressed. From his essay “The Negro-Art Hokum” (1926) to his inflammatory novel Black No More (1931), Schuyler also worked to oppose that same perceived race obsession within the Black community, often criticizing figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey and the organizations they came to represent for manipulating Black racial fears and the collective desire for social equity. Because of that opposition, Schuyler, according to Alexander M. Bain, “remains calcified in literary history as an iconoclastic satirist who marginalized himself by denouncing Pan-Africanism, dismissing ideas of ‘Negro Art’ formulated by Langston Hughes and others, and turning virulently conservative after World War II” (938).2 Yet, it is exactly that calcification that encourages additional study of Schuyler in the twenty-first century, his dual critique of the machinations of Black and white society providing scholars invaluable insight into the sociopolitical stagnation of U.S. society and, equally as important, contributing hindrances to development of the Black utopia. Much existing study of Schuyler’s utopian/anti-utopian work then tends to focus on his infamous Harlem Renaissance-era novel Black No More and the possibility for radical change explored with the deconstruction of the U.S. color line, if not socially or politically then through technological and scientific means. And while Black No More is an important text certainly worthy of additional exploration, especially given Schuyler’s revelations of the improbability of upending the racial dynamics upon which the nation’s very identity was historically based, there are other important works just as vital in their suggestion of African-American counter-futures and experimentation with Black utopia-building in fictional space. For instance, one of his lesser discussed works, Black Empire, offers what [End Page 75] many consider an Afrofuturist satire3 that, on the one hand, critiques structures of white racism that relegate African-descended peoples to second-class status and, on the other hand, critiques the internal problems within the Black community that hinder the unification of the Black...