Outside the Door and Holding the Key: African American Writers and the Salvation of America

• In Event: Black Lives and the Legacies of US Imperialism

Abstract

In 1940, with the publication of Native Son, Richard Wright suggested that America could save its greedy, separatist, racist soul by recognizing that everyone within its borders had an inherent right to the promises of democracy, especially as those promises related to African-descended peoples who had been brought to American shores against their wills. Wright anticipated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in asserting that the majority white population in America needed to accept its responsibility for the inequality and the structural racism that defined America. Only through a willingness to do so could the country move forward in peaceful and productive paths. Clinging to division and willful forgetfulness simply meant clinging to potential destruction. Wright also anticipated Octavia E. Butler in her novel Parable of the Sower (1993). Like Wright, Butler highlights the “haves” and the “have nots” and suggests that internal division will ultimately tear the country apart. No evil from outside the United States could destroy it before the evil within did so. As prejudices sharpen and resources dwindle in Butler’s novel, people resort to a “dog eat dog” mentality that can only lead to self-combustion (dogs and fires are significant in Parable, as is cannibalism). As Wright and Butler suggest, solutions to problems that confront America do not require higher levels of intellectual theorizing; they are fairly straightforward and simple. People in power need to be willing to turn their power to good instead of suppressing those with little or no power. Rich people need to embrace ways of sharing their wealth to the good of the larger society. Racist people need to challenge their inherited perceptions and move beyond whatever distinctions they believe justify their racism. Holders of vast quantities of land need to contemplate how that land might best be used to feed the millions upon millions of people whose basic health is increasingly jeopardized by poverty and food insecurity. Scientists need to put their discoveries to use for the good of the society. And Big Pharma and other health entities need to stop price-gouging people literally to death.
As outsiders by race and lesser wealth to the centers of American society, Wright and Butler offer olive branches of cooperation that have the potential to move beyond race, color, power, class, wealth, and previous conditions of existence. Wright models soul-searching that sensitive individuals who want to save America would do well to consider. Butler models what failure to do so might lead to—intensely violent climate change, markedly violent human beings, severe scarcity of resources, and the enslavement of populations based on criteria other than color. From their peripheral positions as writers and observers of American society, Wright and Butler posit that salvation for America can come only from transformed minds, transformed hearts, and general transformation of American patterns of existence.

Author

• TRUDIER HARRIS, University of Alabama