George Schuyler was quite possibly among the greatest editorialists that America ever produced.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Born in 1895 in Rhode Island, Schuyler lived in Syracuse, New York with his family until he was old enough to enlist in the United States Army.\u00a0 Upon the completion of World War I, he returned to civilian life, taking up residence in Harlem, where he remained until his death in 1977.\u00a0 It was during the decade of the 1920\u2019s when, from a thirst for intellectual stimulation rather than the appeal of its ideas, Schuyler joined the Socialist Party and began to travel within circles that would subsequently be identified with \u201cthe Harlem Renaissance.\u201d\u00a0 It was also during this decade that he began establishing for himself quite the reputation as a writer.\u00a0 Throughout his life, in addition to authoring what has been called the first black science fiction novel, Black No More<\/em>, Schuyler wrote as well for a plethora of other publications, black and white, including American Mercury, <\/em>founded and edited by H.L. Mencken, the largest of literary giants of that time.\u00a0 Schuyler was a tireless champion for racial equality and a vehement opponent of communism.\u00a0 From 1922 until 1964, he was the editor for The Pittsburg Courier, <\/em>the largest black newspaper publication in the country. \u00a0In 1966, Schuyler composed his autobiography, Black and Conservative<\/em>.<\/p>\n In spite of the distinction that he enjoyed during his time\u2014even the black leftist academic, Cornel West, acknowledges that Schuyler\u2019s autobiography is a \u201cminor classic\u201d in \u201cAfrican-American letters\u201d\u2014Schuyler has been all but forgotten.\u00a0 This, though, is a phenomenon that has been brought about by design. Schuyler, you see, is ideologically inconvenient, for with the greatest of ease, and with equally great frequency, he routinely shattered the ideas that have by now become integral components of the zeitgeist.<\/p>\n In other words, Schuyler is as Politically Incorrect a figure as any.<\/p>\n And he is Politically Incorrect because he was a black conservative who routinely took to task those of his contemporaries who our generation has long since deemed unassailable.<\/p>\n Though Schuyler never spared an occasion to decry the injustices to which whites subjected his fellow blacks, he was equally unsparing in his criticism of the immoral conduct of the latter.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Jeffrey B. Leak, editor of Rac[e]ing to the Right, <\/em>a collection of Schuyler\u2019s essays, couldn\u2019t be more mistaken in his contention that Schuyler had always longed to be \u201ca race man.\u201d\u00a0 He was equally critical of the idiocies and immoralities of blacks and whites precisely because he resoundingly eschewed the sort of blind loyalty\u2014or, perhaps, any <\/em>loyalty\u2014to race that marks the \u201crace men\u201d with whom we are all too familiar.\u00a0<\/p>\n More specifically, Schuyler saw himself (as well as others), first and foremost, as an individual.\u00a0 <\/em>He was as unabashed an advocate of individuality as any could be found.\u00a0 His moral vision in turn not only informed his philosophy of race; it is as well inseparable from his politics\u2014the politics of liberty.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n Schuyler, then, was most certainly not <\/em>the \u201creactionary\u201d that Leak and other \u201cprogressives\u201d would have us think he was.\u00a0 He was no more a reactionary than any other champion of parliamentarianism or federalism.\u00a0 If Schuyler was reactionary, then all of the nemeses of socialism, communism, and every other species of collectivism are equally reactionary.<\/p>\n The keys to understanding Schuyler\u2019s positions are the morality of individuality and the politics of liberty on behalf of which he labored inexhaustibly.\u00a0 It is by virtue of these moral and political-moral commitments that he argued against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Take the Civil Rights Act of 1964.\u00a0 One year before this bill was enacted into law, Schuyler made a compelling case against it. Although he believed that the white majority\u2019s \u201cattitude\u201d toward blacks was \u201cmorally wrong, nonsensical, unfair, un-Christian and cruelly unjust,\u201d federal laws designed to coerce it out of existence are at once impracticable, unnecessary, and unacceptable.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Laws like the Civil Rights Act of \u201964 we will be able to add to the voluminous body of \u201clargely unenforceable legislation [that] has everywhere been characteristic of political immaturity\u201d generally and the United States in particular.\u00a0 Schuyler writes:<\/p>\n \u201cNew countries have a passion for novelty, and a country like America, which grew out of conquest, immigration, revolution and civil war, is prone to speed social change by law, or try to do so, on the assumption that by such legerdemain it is possible to make people better by force<\/em>\u201d (emphasis original).\u00a0<\/p>\n However, this belief \u201chas been the cause of much misery and injustice throughout the ages.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In reality, \u201cit takes lots of time to change social mores, especially with regard to such hardy perennials as religion, race and nationality, to say nothing of social classes.\u201d<\/p>\n The Civil Rights Act of \u201964, like all civil rights laws, is also unnecessary. Encouraging changes in American race relations have been transpiring since the abolition of slavery, Schuyler insists.\u00a0 They have been slow in coming, but they have been \u201cmarked.\u201d\u00a0 Yet \u201ccivil rights laws, state or federal, have had little to do with it.\u201d\u00a0 On those rare occasions when these laws were capable of being enforced and when they appear to have had some effect it is only because \u201cthe majority\u201d didn\u2019t resist them.\u00a0 Otherwise, they \u201cgenerally lain dormant in the law books.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn short,\u201d Schuyler concludes his argument, it is \u201ccustom\u201d\u2014not legislative policy\u2014that \u201chas dictated the pace of compliance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Finally, the main consideration against the Civil Rights Act of \u201964 is the threat that it poses to liberty<\/em>.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Any federal civil rights law is but \u201canother encroachment by the central government on the federalized structure of our society.\u201d\u00a0 Schuyler knew that the liberty that Americans have traditionally prized is not some universal abstraction.\u00a0 Rather, it is a concrete, historic achievement located in the wide diffusion of authority and power of which \u201cthe federalized structure of our society\u201d consists.\u00a0 \u201cArmed with this law enacted to improve the lot of a tenth of the population, the way will be open to enslave the rest of the population.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n This last line may sound dramatic, but Schuyler explains himself.\u00a0 It is worth quoting him at length:<\/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.\u00a0 This is a blow at the very basis of American society which is founded on state sovereignty and individual liberty and preference. We are fifty separate countries, as it were, joined together for mutual advantage, security, advancement, and protection.\u00a0 It was never intended that we should be bossed by a monarch, elected or born.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Schuyler closes out his case against what was then still the bill that the following year would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964.\u00a0 When the latter, along with like legislation, become predominant, \u201cthe United States as a free land will cease to exist.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n When we become reacquainted with Schuyler\u2019s views, it becomes almost axiomatic that it was by design that he has been flushed down the memory hole.<\/p>\n originally published at The New American\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" George Schuyler was quite possibly among the greatest editorialists that America ever produced.\u00a0 Born in 1895 in Rhode Island, Schuyler lived in Syracuse, New York with his family until he was old enough to enlist in the United States Army.\u00a0 Upon the completion of World War I, he returned to civilian life, taking up residence…<\/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-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n