It\u2019s \u201cBlack History Month\u201d again.<\/p>\n
And this means that it is an occasion to attend to matters that have become impossible to discuss in polite society.<\/p>\n
For example, odds are that relatively few people are aware of the name of George S. Schuyler.<\/p>\n
Born in upstate New York in 1895, Schuyler was a black American writer, once associated with \u201cthe Harlem Renaissance,\u201d who was perhaps one of the twentieth century\u2019s most perceptive and wittiest observers.\u00a0 The famed iconoclast H.L. Mencken, of whom Schuyler was a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of sorts, seconds this estimation.\u00a0 Mencken described Schuyler as perhaps the ablest writer, black or white, of his generation.<\/p>\n
Schuyler\u2019s career was as extensive as it was illustrious. \u00a0For over four decades, Schuyler wrote for and edited The Pittsburgh Courier, <\/em>one of the largest black newspaper publications in the country.\u00a0 Yet during this time and well into the 70\u2019s, the decade in which Schuyler would meet his death, publications from across the ideological and racial spectrums eagerly sought to conscript Schuyler\u2019s talents.<\/p>\n He authored what had become recognized as the first racially-oriented science fiction novel, Black No More, <\/em>and his 1966 autobiography, Black and Conservative, <\/em>has been credited by no less a figure than the black Ivy League left-wing scholar Cornel West as a \u201c\u2018minor classic\u2019 in African-American letters.\u201d<\/p>\n While in the earlier decades of his career he leaned left politically, Schuyler, particularly as the Civil Rights era began to take off, began gravitating rightward.\u00a0 He even became a member of the John Birch Society at one point.\u00a0 His political conversion aside, two things about Schuyler remained constant: His passion for racial equality and his equally intense passion for anti<\/em>-Communism.<\/p>\n Schuyler recognized that the communist left aimed to weaponize American blacks in its assault against America and, by implication, the \u201ccapitalist\u201d and \u201cdemocratic\u201d West.\u00a0 He spared no occasion to fight this effort.<\/p>\n In 1950, Schuyler was invited to be a United States delegate to the Congress of Cultural Freedom in Berlin.\u00a0 While delivering his speech, \u201cThe Negro Question without Propaganda,\u201d Schuyler took to task those \u201ctotalitarian slave states\u201d that have waged \u201ca vicious propaganda campaign of lies and distortions\u201d regarding America\u2019s treatment of\u00a0 its \u201cNegro citizens [.]\u201d\u00a0 These communist propagandists \u201chave presented a picture of Negro existence in America so fantastic, so false, so contrary to the facts of his everyday life in the 48 states as to be unrecognizable by anyone familiar with the Nation.\u201d<\/p>\n Schuyler was adamant, insisting that \u201cthe stereotype is so grotesque as to be at once amusing and deplorable.\u201d\u00a0 Thus, those who \u201cso readily believe it\u201d must be lacking in \u201cintelligence and integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n He proceeded to provide an ample supply of numbers that forcefully substantiates his contention that \u201cthe progressive improvement of interracial relations in the United States is the most flattering of the many examples of the superiority of the free American civilization over the soul-shackling reactionism of totalitarian regimes.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, Schuyler decisively made the case that courtesy of \u201cthe system of individual initiative and decentralized authority,\u201d as well as the good will of many a white philanthropist\u2014including white Southern <\/em>philanthropists\u2014American \u201cNegroes\u201d have experienced \u201cunprecedented economic, social, and educational progress\u201d in the United States.<\/p>\n This \u201camazing\u201d progress in every area, including, importantly, the area of health and life expectancy, \u201cwould not have been possible had race hatred been as prevalent as reported.\u201d\u00a0 Schuyler reiterated: \u201cSuch well-being could scarcely obtain in an atmosphere of terror.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1963, Schuyler argued against the Civil Rights bill that would become law the following year.\u00a0 He made at least three arguments against it, but his \u201cprincipal case\u201d against it pertained to \u201cthe dangerous purpose it may serve.\u201d<\/p>\n Namely, the proposed legislation promised to undermine \u201cthe federalized structure of our society\u201d by allocating to the \u201ccentral government,\u201d in the name of \u201cimprove[ing] the lot of a tenth of the population,\u201d the power to \u201censlave the rest of\u201d it. \u00a0Schuyler denied that he was being hyperbolic:<\/p>\n \u201cUnder such a law the individual everywhere is told what he must do and what he cannot do, regardless of the laws and ordinances of his state or community.\u201d<\/p>\n The Civil Rights bill, Schuyler maintained, struck \u201ca blow at the very basis of American society,\u201d a society \u201cfounded on state sovereignty and individual liberty and preference.\u201d<\/p>\n It may shock contemporary audiences to discover that Schuyler recognized in the Civil Rights movement communist control. \u00a0It will doubtless shock more to learn that he had little regard for the Civil Rights leaders of the day, including Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/p>\n When King received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, Schuyler wrote that \u201cthough accustomed to seeing\u201d this award bestowed upon \u201ca succession of pious frauds for the purposes of political propaganda,\u201d he shared the \u201cshock\u201d of the Norwegian media in learning that King would be its next recipient.<\/p>\n In \u201cKing: No Help to Peace,\u201d Schuyler wrote that \u201cneither directly nor indirectly has Dr. King made a contribution to the world (or even domestic) peace.\u201d\u00a0 Alluding to King\u2019s Communist Party \u201cmentors,\u201d Schuyler added: \u201cMethinks the Lenin Prize would have been more appropriate [than the Nobel Prize] for him, for it is no mean feat for one so young to acquire sixty Communist-front citations [.]\u201d<\/p>\n According to Schuyler, King\u2019s \u201cprincipal contribution to world peace has been to roam the country like some sable typhoid-Mary, infecting the mentally disturbed with the perversion of Christian doctrine, and grabbing lecture fees from the shallow-pated.\u201d<\/p>\n King\u2019s \u201cincitement,\u201d he charged, \u201cpacked jails with Negroes and some whites, getting them beaten, bitten and firehosed, thereby bankrupting communities, raising bail and fines, to the vast enrichment of Southern Law and order.\u201d<\/p>\n King \u201cpersistently entered cities\u2026 after local Negro leadership had begged\u201d him and his entourage \u201cto get lost.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cIn none of them [these cities] was anything gained.\u201d<\/p>\n Even the Montgomery bus strike, which Schuyler reluctantly acknowledges may <\/em>be King\u2019s singular \u201cmeritorious service,\u201d was ultimately \u201cwon by the much-derided NAACP legalism which ended Jim Crow bus service everywhere by federal court order.\u201d That is, it was not won by boycotts.<\/p>\n There is much more that can be said about George S. Schuyler.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s \u201cBlack History Month\u201d again. And this means that it is an occasion to attend to matters that have become impossible to discuss in polite society. For example, odds are that relatively few people are aware of the name of George S. Schuyler. Born in upstate New York in 1895, Schuyler was a black American…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n