He writes about a black scientist who finds he can whiten African-Americans by electricity and by changin "certain gland secretions." The process also gives Caucasion hair, noses and lips. Schuyler imagines that in the 1930s most American blacks become white, voluntarily. Whitened women still bear black children, but treatments can make them look like their mothers in only 24 hours. Fantastic? Impossible? Maybe not!
Schuyler is satirical and cynical (like H.L. Mencken, who was fond of him), but he's also serious. He thinks such a discovery may soon occur and that it will do more good than harm, though it won't bring Utopia. He's the very opposite of a melanist, a black who believes melanin bestows physical and spiritual powers which whites lack.
I admire Schuyler. Although his novel is not great, it deserves to be discussed widely and made into a film--updated. He doesn't metion genes because in 1931 they werren't being mapped, altered, eradicated and transplanted, as they are today. What will happen when the genes responsible for racial traits are identified? Have they been located already, but hushed up for fear of controversy? When the knowledge is out in the open, some religionists will accuse scientists of "playing God." But the whole human race has always been playing God to make life better. For instance, we've improved plants and domestic animals. Why not? Has God objected? Should we stop killing mosquitoes because they are God's? Should we execute plastic surgeons? Maybe God himself(or herself or itself) is constantly tinkering with the world.
I hope scientists will find a means of turning everybody tan, not white. Millions of whites tan themselves temporarily, so I'm sure many could be persuaded to become brown permanently. Many blacks too. "Let's Turn Tan and Lessen Prejudice!" A campaign with such slogans wouldn't be a cure-all, but it would be very beneficial, wouldn't it?
Scientists should study Black No More. because of the advances in genetics, Schuyler's time has come. He's not a self-hating traitor to his race. He's simply realistic. Read him!
[Editor's note: For more information on George Schuyler, see his Black Empire, ed. with afterword by Robert A. Hill nad Kent Rasmussen, and foreword by John A. Williams(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1991). This is a bizarre Black mad scientist pulp sci-fi political fantasy novel, first published in newspapers in the 1930s. Williams recalls that Schuyler was fanatically anit-communist, and also anti-everything else. An autobiography Black and Conservative, was published by Arlington House in 1966.