Racism in Fiction

    Let’s imagine a novel, written by a white man, in which there’s one black person. There are a bevy of white characters, notably the first person narrator. The black man (call him Jake, though he’s mostly referred to as “nigger” or “boy”) appears very often in the narrative — the book is actually about him — and he’s portrayed throughout as stupid, malicious, dishonest, vulgar, amoral, cowardly, brutal, drunken, incompetent. And he smells bad. I’m missing a number of pejorative terms to describe Jake, but you get the gist. He has no redeeming qualities.

Would you consider this depiction of Jake to be racist? I would. To unrelentingly present one — and only one — black character in such a way is unfair to a race. And he’s in contrast to all the white characters who are the polar opposite of Jake. They are downright noble.

No legitimate press would publish this novel.

But that scenario is turned on its head in Percival Everett’s God’s Country. The narrator, Curt Mauder, is white, as is every other character in the book — except one, a black man named Bubba. And every one of these whites, including Curt, display the negative qualities ascribed above to Jake. While Bubba’s only fault is anger. Justified anger, since these stinkpot whites look down on Bubba, mistreat him. He’s a “nigger,” a “boy.” and he better watch how he looks into a while man’s eyes. Bubba is a proud man, and in a subdued way he’s defiant. Subdued because he knows that in any confrontation or conflict with a white man he’ll be considered the guilty party, no matter how blameless he is. He could be strung up without a trial. He’s a noble man existing in a world of prejudice.

In this case the author is black. And, of course, the book got published by the highly regarded firm of Faber and Faber.

I’m going to explore this novel further, but it’s not with a sense of indignation. I was not even annoyed by it. I was surprised and somewhat amused. Amused not by the type of humor Everett doles out, but by the fact that in 1994 what he wrote in God’s Country is treated with respect. This in an era when a white person can have his or her career ended if they’re found to have used the “N-word” But in my post-reading explorations I could find nothing that cites the racism directed toward whites that’s on constant display in the book. On the back cover three noted authors (all white) heap praise on it. On the Goodreads site I found an overwhelming number of 4 and 5 star reviews. Only when I dropped to the few negative reviews did I find some tentative misgivings about the race issue.

Percival Everett has a high reputation in the literary world (though I had never heard of him until recently, and GC is the only book by him I’ve read). Anyway, I did a bit of internet exploring. From what I can garner, most of his work is about the race issue. But I see no indication that he was oppressed by racism (there’s a note on the Wikipedia site that his great-grandmother “was at one point a slave”). He was born in 1956 in Georgia, where his father was a sergeant in the army (a desegregated army, since 1948). Later the family moved to South Carolina where his father became a dentist. OK, in the South, in the 1960s, he must have been exposed to some racism. But, to place things in perspective, Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech in 1963, when Everett was seven. He was not living in the bad old days, but on the brink of a movement toward equality. And he was not brought up poor; in fact, he seems rather privileged. He got a bachelors degree in philosophy from the University of Miami, and later an MFA from Brown University. Besides writing novels (a lot of them) he has taught in various prestigious writing programs (currently USC).

God’s Country is set in the post Civil War west. Everett was attempting to write a wild and wacky comedy, but that doesn’t exempt him from the truth. So — has he accurately depicted that world? Specifically, was the west teeming with racists? I’ve read a lot of books about that subject, by authors who have done extensive research. Actually, there were quite a few blacks populating the west. Black men came because it was a move into a fairly egalitarian world. In many cases the races worked together, lived together, and the primary element that people valued was not someone’s color, but how good could they could do their job, how reliable and trustworthy they were. Another issue regards the Indians. In GC they, like Bubba, are the good guys. Just victims of avaricious and cruel white men. Is this true? No — sorry, but the Indians were generally as dangerous as the whites (some tribes, such as the Hopi, were peaceful). Before the white man set foot in the New World, the Indians were constantly engaged in warfare with one another — brutal warfare, replete with torture, and often leading to the extinction of the loser. They were a dangerous enemy, and were feared. It’s true that they were pushed off the land by a stronger force, and the process — which does involve cruelty and avarice — was not one that is a shining episode in American history. 

One of the notable Indian fighters was Colonel George Armstrong Custer. He appears several times in Everett’s novel. After the U.S. Calvary wantonly slaughters an entire tribe, he appears on the scene to scalp the dead body of chief Big Elk (who is Bubba’s close friend, and is, like Bubba, a noble man). Bubba sets out to avenge what was done, and finds Custer in a room in a saloon where prostitutes ply their trade (there’s one female character in the novel, a white woman, and she’s a prostitute with a heart as hard as a brass spittoon). He finds Custer dressed in lady’s underwear. Hmm. Where’s the historical backing that Custer was a cross-dresser? I’m no fan of Custer, but still. Would an author portray Abraham Lincoln as cross-dresser and get away with it? 

I’m not writing a review of God’s Country — it’s not worth the effort. Everett is a facile writer, and it seemed to me that he tossed off this piece of crude and abusive nonsense with the primary purpose of expressing his feelings toward the white race. We’re supposed to laugh at their idiocy, meanness, dishonesty (etc, etc, etc). My reaction to one white character is worth noting: he has no name and appears for maybe half a page — he’s shopkeeper of some sort — and I was surprised that he acted reasonably and decently to both Curt and Bubba. Imagine that! — a decent, reasonable white man! As for the humor, a quick example: the prostitute constantly mispronounces Curt’s name; she calls him Dirt. Funny, huh? 

The ending is a clear case of an author abandoning a project. All the major plot lines are left unresolved. What we get is a symbolic statement regarding the races. As Bubba gets on his mule to ride away, something comes over Curt: “. . . some kind of blind historical urge and that black man in front of me weren’t no kind of real human being, just a thing.” And he puts a bullet in Bubba’s back. Bubba falls to the ground but gets back up and again mounts his mule. Five more bullets in Bubba’s back, five more times he falls and rises, remounts. Finally he turns and makes what amounts to a speech to Curt, about his intention to find somewhere he can make a life for himself. “And you or somebody who looks like you or thinks like you or is you will find me and you’ll burn me out, shoot me or maybe lynch me. But you know something? You can’t kill me.” And he rides off.

Message time. In a novel full of falsification and distortion in which the villains are all white, we get a message about the endurance of the black race.

Why did I check this novel out from the library and read it? Because, from that library I get the latest issues of The New Yorker and The Atlantic (bastions of what’s classified by some as the “liberal press”). Recently both had long articles about Percival Everett. Seems he’s written a novel called James, in which the character of Jim in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn tells the story. Praise abounds from big sources: Genius, masterpiece, an enlightening work of literary art. 

I won’t be turning to it for enlightenment. Everett has, for me, abdicated his right to enlightenment. I have a problem with racism, no matter who the victim may be. 

The reaction to God’s Country raises political issues. Today, in this country, we have a Right and a Left. There’s a reasonable element on both sides, but they seem unable to talk rationally to one another. In the two plot lines I presented in the opening paragraphs of this essay, both sides would object to the first, where the black race is demeaned. But regarding the second plot line, which describes Everett’s novel, I hear no voices from the liberal side accusing the author of writing a racist diatribe.

Do you see a double standard at work?

Think it over.