A Forgotten Black Conservative: Another Look at George S. Schuyler

[FrankRep]

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A Forgotten Black Conservative: Another Look at George S. Schuyler (http://thenewamerican.com/opinion/jack-kerwick/8240-a-forgotten-black-conservative-another-look-at-george-s-schuyler)


Jack Kerwick, Ph.D. | The New American (http://thenewamerican.com/)
16 July 2011


In my companion article ("A Forgotten Black Conservative: A Closer Look at George S. Schuyler (http://thenewamerican.com/opinion/jack-kerwick/8287-a-forgotten-black-conservative-a-closer-look-at-george-s-schuyler)") I wrote about George S. Schuyler, a great conservative who also happened to have been black. Since his death in 1977, he has, unfortunately, been forgotten. It is with an eye toward rectifying this situation that I write about him.

That Schuyler could lay legitimate claim to the conservative tradition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism) is born out by a few things, namely, his belief in the tradition or culturally-constituted character of human life; his rejection of rapid and revolutionary change; and his anti-utopianism. Though each of these ideas is conceptually distinct, in conservative thought they tend to be intertwined.

Schuyler witnessed the proliferation of a number of “Back to Africa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-to-Africa_movement)” movements. The adherents of such movements wished to see American blacks take up residence in the continent from whence their ancestors were taken. As far as Schuyler was concerned, this was a utopian dream of the worst sort. The reason for this was simple: American blacks, by virtue of inheriting the same cultural traditions as their white counterparts, share substantially more in common with the latter than they share with non-American blacks.

Schuyler explains that while “their training and education would undoubtedly be helpful to the backward and newly-emergent states” throughout the non-Western world, “barriers of language and culture” guarantee that black Americans “would not be accepted today anywhere on earth[.]” With respect to the black American’s relationship vis-à-vis Africa specifically, he writes:

“Soil depletion, desiccation and the most general impoverishment and ignorance of quarreling ethnic groups indigenous to the Dark Continent make it most unappealing to people whose standard of living is in general superior to that of Europeans, to say nothing of Africans.”

Simply put, “American Negroes” have “nothing whatever in common with even the most advanced Africans [.]”

It will doubtless surprise many a contemporary reader, black and white, to learn that Schuyler also opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964). This legislation he viewed as another species of utopia, for like all utopian schemes, its designs could be implemented only at the cost of depriving us of much that we already enjoyed — in this case, our liberties as Americans.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Schuyler believed, would be but the latest effort “to speed social change by law [.]” This, in turn, implies that “it is possible to make people better by force,” an idea that has “been the cause of much misery and injustice throughout the ages.” A relatively young country like America, overcome as it is by delusions of grandeur regarding its own character and always tempted to succumb to the “passion for novelty,” is particularly disposed to suppose that rapid change can be induced through the creation of law. But, as Schuyler accentuates, this is nothing more or less than a sign of “political immaturity.”

“It is axiomatic,” Schuyler confidently asserts, “that it 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.” In order for legislation to be effective, it needs to be buttressed by custom. Unless legislation accommodates the community’s sensibilities — unless it seems to be a reflection or function of its customs — its enforcement will be that much “more difficult and expensive” and the government will be that much “less popular.”

Schuyler was under no illusions concerning the treatment to which black Americans had historically been subjected by the white majority. This treatment has been “morally wrong, nonsensical, unfair, un-Christian and cruelly unjust [.]” Still, there a few considerations that he insisted we bear in mind.

First, America was “dealing better” in its quest for racial equality than any other multi-racial society on the face of the planet. Schuyler wrote that while “it was all well and good to expect more of America than any other country,” we mustn’t ever lose sight of the fact that what “was an American problem was also a global one from which no country was free.”

Second, since blacks’ emancipation in 1865 (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2967.html), there have been changes in America that, however slow the rate at which they’ve transpired, have nevertheless “been marked.” Yet “civil rights laws, state or federal, have had little to do with it.” What civil rights laws were passed throughout the decades “have been enforced and accepted only when the dominant majority acquiesced, and have generally lain dormant in the law books.” To state it succinctly, it has been “custom,” not law, that “has dictated the pace of compliance” with the law.

The final and most important consideration that Schuyler invoked when attending to the Civil Rights bill of 1964, his “principal case” against it, pertains to the constitutional liberty that it imperils. As he said, this bill promised to be “another encroachment by the central government on the federalized structure (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/federalism/) of our society….” Schuyler continued:

“Under such a law, the individual everywhere is told what he must do and what he cannot do, regardless of the laws and ordinances his state or community.” As should be obvious, this legal arrangement is “a blow at the very basis of American society which is founded on state sovereignty and individual liberty and preference.”

That Schuyler possessed an abiding understanding of and appreciation for tradition, recognized destructive utopian fantasies when he saw them, and detected — and valued — the secret (“the federalized structure of our society”) of our American liberties prove that he was a great conservative.

These characteristics also prove that he was a great American.


SOURCE:
http://thenewamerican.com/opinion/jack-kerwick/8240-a-forgotten-black-conservative-another-look-at-george-s-schuyler

[FrankRep]

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Black and conservative;: The autobiography of George S. Schuyler (1966) (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006BOFI6/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=libert0f-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0006BOFI6)




As far back as the 1960s, one of the most notable black writers in the country — George S. Schuyler — became a member of The John Birch Society.


A Forgotten Black Conservative: A Closer Look at George S. Schuyler (http://thenewamerican.com/opinion/jack-kerwick/8287-a-forgotten-black-conservative-a-closer-look-at-george-s-schuyler)


Jack Kerwick, Ph.D. | The New American (http://thenewamerican.com/)
20 July 2011


Over the years, The John Birch Society — the organization of which The New American is an organ — has been besmirched by its ideological rivals for all manner of evil, most prominently of which is the sin of “racism.” More specifically, given that its membership has always been and remains predominantly white, it is “white racism” with which it has been charged.

However, it is difficult to see how this charge can be made to fit once it is recognized that as far back as the 1960s, one of the most notable black writers in the country — George S. Schuyler — became a member of JBS. Actually, Schuyler was among the most astute, courageous, wittiest, and impassioned writers, black, white, or other.

Of course, that Schuyler was a conservative and a member of JBS is not recognized by many because, regretfully, Schuyler himself is no longer remembered.

Born in 1895 in Rhode Island, Schuyler spent his formative years in Syracuse, New York. He served in World War I and, upon being discharged, moved to Harlem where he spent the rest of his days until his death in 1977. Yet during this time, Schuyler enjoyed quite an eventful existence.

Throughout the decade of the 1920s, he became associated with that circle of artists that history would recall as “the Harlem Renaissance.” During this same period, interestingly enough, Schuyler also joined the Socialist Party. However, in his autobiography, Black and Conservative (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006BOFI6/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=libert0f-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0006BOFI6), Schuyler admits that it was from a craving for intellectual stimulation, and not an affinity for socialism, that initially drew him to this organization. But even though it was only a relatively short while before he became disenchanted with the ideas of his associates, apparently his time as a member was not for naught, for from this juncture onward, Schuyler became an ardent enemy of all things that so much as remotely smelled of communism. To the end of combating “the red threat,” he employed his skills as a writer for such publications as H.L. Mencken’s American Mercury and The Pittsburg Courier, the largest black newspaper publication in America of which Schuyler was editor from 1922 until 1964.

The title of Schuyler’s autobiography, Black and Conservative (1966), is indeed a fitting description, for Schuyler was a conservative. That there were differences of various sorts between the races he never would have dreamt to deny. But these differences, he insisted, had nothing to do with nature; they were cultural. To put this point another way, like any good conservative, Schuyler underscored the monumental role that tradition plays in constituting identity. And in order to show that it was culture or tradition that accounts for differences between black and white Americans, he drew attention to their similarities — likenesses that ordinarily escape casual observers of both races.

For example, Schuyler repudiated the notion that there was something that can aptly be termed “the Harlem Renaissance” — if it is said to center around a distinctively black art. He wrote: “Negro art there has been, is, and will be among the numerous black nations of Africa; but to suggest the possibility of any such development among the ten million colored people in this republic is self-evident foolishness.” Slave songs, “the blues,” jazz, and “the Charleston” are alike the creations of blacks, but, as Schuyler notes, they originated with Southern blacks and, as such, are “foreign to Northern Negroes, West Indian Negroes, and African Negroes. In short, they are as “expressive or characteristic of the Negro race” as “the music and dancing of the Appalachian highlanders or the Dalmatian peasantry are expressive or characteristic of the Caucasian race.”

Within the context of America, so-called “Negro art” is in reality Eurocentric. As Schuyler put it, “the Aframerican [sic] is merely a lampblacked [sic] Anglo-Saxon.” He was not short on substantiation for this claim.

“The dean of the Aframerican literati is W.E.B. Du Bois, a product of Harvard and German universities; the foremost Aframerican sculptor is Meta Warwick Fuller, a graduate of leading American art schools and former student of Rodin; while the most noted Aframerican painter, Henry Ossawa Tanner, is dean of painters in Paris and has been decorated by the French Government.”

That black American artists are more akin to their white counterparts than either blacks and whites tend to realize is unsurprising once we consider that “the Aframerican is subject to the same economic and social forces that mold the actions and thoughts of the white American.” For instance, “in the homes of the black and white Americans of the same cultural and economic level one finds similar furniture, literature, and conversation.” Schuyler asks: “How, then, can the black American be expected to produce art and literature dissimilar to that of the white American?”

What Schuyler believes is true of the black American artist he is convinced is no less true of black Americans generally: their dispositions, tastes, and sensibilities are the products, not of a uniquely “black nature,” but the Eurocentric or Anglo-Saxon cultural traditions in which they were nurtured. Conservatives, forever mindful of the tradition or culturally constituted character of individual identity, have always regarded the radically individualistic notion of the “self-made man” as a fiction: no one can literally lift himself up by his own bootstraps, for every person is dependent, often in ways of which he is unaware, upon the assistance of others. Doubtless, Schuyler is of a piece with other conservative thinkers on this score. But he goes a step beyond this to rebuke the related idea that racial groups can shed the cultural traditions within which their distinguishing features were formed.

From Schuyler’s discussion of racial issues, conservatives of all races can learn much about their own intellectual tradition.


SOURCE:
http://thenewamerican.com/opinion/jack-kerwick/8287-a-forgotten-black-conservative-a-closer-look-at-george-s-schuyler