Schuyler’s Black No More and Morales’ The Rag Doll Plagues: Negative Effects of Hybridization Both Schuyler’s Black No More and Morales’ The Rag Doll Plagues show the detrimental societal effects that arise from the forceful imposition of a new culture onto a preexisting culture and offer different methods of limiting these harmful effects. Black No More consists of a satire in which a scientific breakthrough makes black people appear white and uses this alternate history to decry the economic subjugation of blacks by whites through the imposition of an economically focused culture of capitalism over the more socially focused culture that appears predominantly amongst the novel’s black people. The Rag Doll Plagues also portrays an alternative history; however, its history is much closer to our own and contains a much more realistic depiction of events in Mexico and Southern California in the past, present, and future. The link between the different times is the narrator of each time, a physician or doctor named Gregory in each case, whose initial conformance with normative practice under the dominant culture is eventually replaced with the native culture of the Americas to the benefit of himself and the society in which he acts. In this way both novels reveal the destructive power that capitalism holds against cultures that do not seek economic ascendancy in the same way. Thus, despite the radically different races, cultures, levels of hybridization, and even time periods on which these novels focus, they both depict a dramatic imbalance in many parts of society due to capitalistic cultural imposition of the white majority and its resulting economic stratification, yet they also offer a sense of hope for the resolution of these inequalities for subjugated races by returning to their original culture. In both novels a less privileged race is dominated by a more privileged race and has its original culture suppressed by the culture of the dominant race. In Black No More the dominant Lastname 2 race is the white majority of the United States while the dominated race is the black minority whose culture based upon meaningful social interaction is suppressed and corrupted by the materialistic white culture focused on capitalistic greed. Schuyler reveals the first black man to be made white Max Disher’s dismay toward the “hard, materialistic, grasping, ill-bred society of the whites” (Schuyler 34) shortly after his conversion. This description of white society is directly contrasted by the description of black society after the introduction of the black to white procedure: “Gone was the almost European atmosphere of every Negro ghetto, the music, laughter, gaiety, jesting, abandon. Instead one noted the same…strained faces to be seen…around a new oil district or before a gold rush” (Schuyler 52). The materialistic nature of white society is not only stated explicitly, but also through comparisons to gold and oil rushes which conveys a sense of desperate and unhappy materialism. This unhappy material culture is directly contrasted with the jovial black culture, and in spite of its ugliness, the materialistic culture of greed dominates the social culture of the black people. The Rag Doll Plagues, in contrast, depicts Native American domination at the hands of three different groups in three different time periods: Spanish colonial administrators in the 18th century, privileged white Americans in the late 20th century, and a privileged Euroamerican group in a plausible future at the end of the 21st century. Despite the numerous forms of the privileged power, the novel’s theme of a repetitive historical cycle makes it possible to simplify the power struggle as that of a privileged white group overpowering the culture of the Native Americans. This domination reveals itself in several forms in the different parts of the novel, but one of the predominant ways it reveals itself, like in Black No More is through social stratification resulting from the capitalist system of greed imposed by the white majority. Lastname 3 The economic domination that results from the capitalist systems in the novels is one of the primary methods through which the dominant group maintains power over the subjugated group. In Black No More this is made apparent by the presentation of every wealthy black person in as having acquired their wealth by embracing capitalist greed and taking advantage of their own race. This is most apparent in Dr. Junius Crookman who invents the procedure that converts people from black to white through his company “Black No More” (Schuyler 8-9). Crookman becomes fabulously wealthy as a result of his invention thus embodying white capitalist greed, while simultaneously claiming a great love and appreciation of his race (Schuyler 28, 29, 49). The irony of Crookman’s supposed love of his race is that he seeks to improve his own economic status by eliminating it entirely which is completely contradictory to his supposed love of his race, but one that is justified to him because of the influence white capitalist greed has had on him. Economic subjugation also plays a major role in The Rag Doll Plagues as shown in the contrast of the living conditions of the Spanish elite and the Mexican natives in the first section of the book. The chief Spanish colonial officer Viceroy Don Juan Vicente is described as being adorned in clothed in garments made from gilt thread and frequenting a chapel with large amounts of gold treasures, (Morales 45) while the central plaza of Mexico City, which the subjugated Natives frequent contains “…the bodies of hundreds of dead dogs in a pile covered with a blanket of flies…” (Morales 25). The implication of the extreme poverty of one group and extreme wealth of the other shows a parasitic relationship in which the privileged colonials live a one-sided life of luxury at the horrific expense of the natives. The gold imagery, and especially its proximity to both religion and a seat of official power evokes the motto of the original Spanish conquistadors: “God, Gold, and Glory” which were the three commodities they wanted to either spread or acquire for themselves when they came to conquer the indigenous peoples of Lastname 4 the new world. This economic disparity is but one of the many ways in which the domination of the underprivileged by the privileged manifests itself. Capitalist domination, due to its major role in the culture of the white majority, also manifested itself in the suppression of the culture of the less privileged race. Morales shows this in the second part of his novel when a large group of barrio homeboys, or young men of the Chicano community attend a play at a theater typically frequented by only the white privileged upper class of Orange County, California. The privileged elite lash out against the display of a culture different to their own and immediately suppress further Latin American plays. The homeboys have no interest in the privileged culture of the white upper class and abandon the theater, showing a symbolic abandonment or at least a slight shift away from their own culture. (Morales 90-93). This blatant form of censorship is bad enough as it stands in a literal sense as it shows the suppression of a less privileged group merely because their style is not appreciated. But when the style itself is considered: handmade jackets decorated with images of la Virgen de Guadalupe, a traditional symbol of the Mexican natives, the meaning becomes a more symbolic suppression of culture by a more economically powerful invasive group onto a less powerful native group. In Black No More cultural imposition is primarily shown in the disappearance of black culture following the spread of Crookman’s Black No More procedure. One of the holdouts against the procedure is a black hairstylist in Harlem named Madame Blandish whose occupation was to “[make] Negroes appear as much like white folks as possible” which she did very successfully until the introduction of the procedure puts her out of business (Schuyler 31, 32), and she didn’t want to undergo the procedure because “she liked her business and her social position in Harlem” (Schuyler 33). However, by the end of the novel the economic pressure exerted on her by the growing force of capitalism in proportion to the disappearance of black Lastname 5 race due to the procedure forces her to abandon her position in the rapidly disappearing black society in favor of a better chance at economic success as a white woman (Schuyler 150). Even though she had gained her modestly successful social and economic status through black culture and society, she abandons it because of the enormous degree to which white capitalist culture dominates black socially focused culture. In spite of the degradation both economically and culturally that the less privileged races in these novels endure, both novels offer some hope for the subjugated race. At the end of Black No More nearly all of the blacks in America have become white, so Dr. Crookman distributes a pamphlet stating that the original white people will have slightly darker skin, and as a result, the white people quickly attempt to make themselves as dark as possible in an ironic flip of the original structure of society (Schuyler 148-150). This flip effectively eliminates the color aspect of race by illustrating how society redistributes itself to form a privileged and an unprivileged group around capitalist greed, and emphasizes the cultural and economic aspects of the societal divide. Through this societal flip, Schuyler reveals that black society would have been better off remaining in their original state than in changing to appear white, showing that by maintaining their original culture, the black people of the novel would have secured a better social standing that allows for better economic standing in the novel. The Rag Doll Plagues delivers a similar message in a repeating theme of each of the three books of the story. In each story Gregory begins his medical career under the direction of the privileged powerful race: In the first he is a physician for the King of Spain (Morales 11); in the second he is a doctor at a clinic in Orange County; and in the third he is a medical director for a large area of the west coast of North America under the control of the directorate, a large governmental organization that controls all of North America. However, in each of the stories he abandons the callous normative form of Lastname 6 power in favor of Native Indian medicine and culture that emphasizes acceptance and fraternity above all else (Morales 66, 128, 198-199). The stories inevitably end on a hopeful note, with Gregory embracing the new opportunities that his shift to native culture provides and symbolically acting as a beacon of hope for the Native race if they can embrace their own culture and either rid themselves of, or limit the effects of capitalist dominating culture. In this way, the path to better social and economic welfare is through a return to native forms of culture even in the face of capitalist domination. These novels depict alternative histories to the one in which we reside, one through satire, and one in a more serious cyclical form, yet they discuss issues which have plagued and continue to plague our society. The depictions of the overwhelming power of capitalist greed over multiple aspects of society is extremely pertinent to American society and the issues it has faced in embracing a capitalist culture of greed. The ability for an economic system to have not only detrimental economic effects for a subjugated race, but also societal and even cultural effects poses a challenge to readers to see the effects of capitalism for themselves and attempt to find a solution. The novels each offer a small glimmer of hope in the power of embracing one’s culture, but the struggle which the subjugated cultures constantly face challenges readers to find their own solution to the problem of capitalist greed. Lastname 7 Works Cited Morales, Alejandro. The Rag Doll Plagues. Houston, TX: Arte Publico, 1992. Print. Schuyler, George S. Black No More. New York: Modern Library, 1999. Print.
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