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1196 An American Dilemma
destroyer of racial stereotypes. The fiction writers are intellectuals, and it is more pos-
sible to expose them to modern scientific knowledge than the average reading public.
Their resistance is, however, rooted in their interest in keeping their market. People
want to meet their stereotyped beliefs in the books they buy.
Sterling A. Brown is the author of a paper “Negro Character as Seen by White
Authors,” from which we quote:
“The Negro has met w’ith as great injustice in American literature as he has in
American life. The majority of books about Negroes merely stereotype Negro character.
, . . Those considered important enough for separate classification, although overlap-
pings do occur, are seven in number: (i) The Contented Slave, (2) The Wretched
Freeman, (3) The Comic Negro, (4) The Brute Negro, (5) The Tragic Mulatto,
(6) The Local Color Negro, and (7) The Exotic Primitive.
“A detailed evaluation of each of these is impracticable because of limitations of space.
It can be said, however, that all of these stereotypes are marked either by exaggeration
or omissions; that they all agree in stressing the Negro’s divergence from an Anglo-
Saxon norm to the flattery of the latter; they could all be used, as they probably are,
as justification of racial proscription; they all illustrate dangerous specious generalizing
from a few particulars recorded by a single observer from a restricted point of view
which is itself generally dictated by the desire to perpetuate a stereotype.
“All of these stereotypes are abundantly to be found in American literature, and are
generally accepted as contributions to true racial understanding. Thus one critic, setting
out imposingly to discuss ‘The Negro character’ in American literature, can still say,
unabashedly, that ^thc whole range of the Negro character is revealed thoroughly^ in one
twenty-six line sketch by Joel Chandler Harris of Br’er Fox and Br’er Mud Turtle.”
(Journal of Negro Education [April, 1933], p. 180.) Sterling Brown’s reference
is to John H. Nelson, The Negro Character in American Literature (1926), p. 118.
This article was expanded by Brown and published in pamphlet form: The Negro in
A merican Fiction (1937).
Just to exemplify the type of prejudice transferred by good nonmalicious fiction, a
few paragraphs may be quoted from Booth Tarkington’s Penrod^ first published serially
in various magazines and later as a book, in several editions from 1913 on (italics
ours). The book has been read by a great proportion of all American boys year after
year. Its hero is a twelve-year-old middle class white boy living in a middle-sized Mid-
western town. The Negro boys in the story, Herman and Verman (the names them-
selves are significant), live in an alley near Penrod’s home. They are having a fight with
a white man, Rupe Collins.
“Expressing vocally his indignation and the extremity of his pained surprise, Mr.
Collins stepped backward, holding his left hand over his nose, and striking at Herman
with his right. Then Verman hit him with the rake.
“Verman struck from behind. He struck as hard as he could. And he struck with the
tines down. For in his simple, direct African way he wished to kill his enemy, and he
wished to kill him as soon as possible. That was his single, earnest purpose,
“On this account, Rupe Collins was peculiarly unfortunate. He was plucky and he
enjoyed conflict, but neither his ambitions nor his anticipations had ever included mur-
der. He had not learned that an habitually aggressive person runs the danger of colliding
with beings in one of those lower stages of evolution wherein theories about ^hitting
below the belP have not yet made their appearance^ » * *
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