Mark Twain and Paul Laurence Dunbar Race and the Politics of Memory

Ark Twain and Paul Laurence Dunbar, Race and the Politics of Memory

It is a confirmed fact that even the most rudimentary foundations of racial equality within the United States, as it specifically applies to African-Americans and to Caucasians, did not occur until the midway point of the 20th century when the Civil Rights movement began in earnest and advances towards a full-fledged integration were made. It is also noted within Fishkin's text that there were a number of ex-slaves who were decidedly nostalgic regarding the institution of chattel slavery of which they were a part. These slaves perhaps fancied the feeling of the lash on the back, or the welcome sight of their supposed masters raping, torturing, and killing women at their whim while such slaves were powerless to stop them. Or perhaps they simply had privileged positions of fetching the food and cleaning the filth of slave owners in their homes, instead of toiling in the fields all day (literally).

Still, the length of time in which racial equality was achieved (if it truly has been achieved, an increasingly dubitable fact as recent headlines on the subject would indicate), which took place nearly 100 years after slavery was officially abolished, suggests that no sentiment on the part of African-Americans impacted such equality. The reality is that regardless of how African-Americans felt about slavery or about anything else, they were still in positions of disenfranchisement in which there was truly no need to grant parity between the races -- for the simple fact that their socio-economic position was so far beneath that of many Caucasians. The subsequent quotation indicates this fact. "Freed without being given any land, many former slaves were forced to work the farms of their former masters for wages so low that each year found them deeper in debt, bound more deeply to the masters who called them sharecroppers but treated them as slaves"( Fishkin). These financial realities superseded any sentiment that ex-slaves may have had regarding racial equality. Quite simply, there could be no such equality in these disparate conditions in which African-Americans and Caucasians existed.

The prudent reader can infer that Fishkin does believe that African-Americans could have made political giants if the literary works of Mark Twain and Paul Lawrence Dunbar were not misunderstood. However, it is crucial to note the fact that such a misunderstanding on the part of the majority of Americans (most of whom were Caucasian) was very deliberate. As Fishkin himself denotes, one of the "major lies of silent assertion" that were prevalent during the time both of these authors were writing was the "denial of what white America was doing to black America at the time" (Fishkin). It is this feeling of denial that largely enabled Americans to deliberately misinterpret what the aforementioned writers were publishing about the state of race relations, which contributed to the fact that these works were not able to make substantial political gains for African-Americans.

Fishkin's conviction regarding the political gains that African-Americans could have made due to the works of Twain and Dunbar is fairly apparent after reading his article. They used a couple of different literary and rhetorical devices that were particularly effective in depicting the evils of slavery and the time period after reconstruction. For instance, both writers were able to vividly portray the state of affairs in the country in its southern region by employing southern dialect in their pieces (something which Twain was especially noted for. They also were able to encapsulate potent imagery of the wrongs of the state of race relations as well as the history of those wrongs in such a way that Americans could more perspicaciously visualize them. Therefore, Fishkin believed "Twain and Dunbar intervened in the national imaginary by signifying on those demeaning and misleading falsities with fiction and poetry of their own that revisited the slave period for a different end -- exposing the racism of the period" (Fishkin).

It certainly does appear that Dunbar's literary message could have been misunderstood even if he had used his own pictures. The principle evidence that buttresses this opinion is the author's copious usage of dialect in his poems. During the particular epoch in which Dunbar was writing, dialect was not an accepted literary convention. The dialect of stereotypical southern African-Americans, in particular, was not accepted throughout the literary world at the time. Thus, any sort of social implications spawned from such poetry would more than likely result in a lack of understanding about such works, rather than from a concrete understanding of them, since for the most part dialect was viewed by mainstream America as a sarcastic or a joking form of literature. According to Oswald "dialect writing was "used primarily for comic effect or to indicate stupidity and racial inferiority" (Oswald).

With such an established reputation for dialect writing, Dunbar's works had immense difficulty in changing the perception of this type of writing. It is noteworthy that the author chose such a style of writing so that he could more accurately portray the realities of African-Americans, particularly those in the south who talked in such a manner. His writing, then, was infused with a sense of realness that was largely not accepted by mainstream America. Oswald contends that there is evidence that supports the fact that "Dunbar's poetry subverted the contemporary conventions of dialect writing" (Oswald). The author was trying to use such writing for serious purposes, when mainstream America did not view it as a serious form of writing. As such, regardless of the usage of implications, Dunbar's literary message still had a substantial tendency for misinterpretation.

It is difficult to argue that the added images to some of Dunbar's poetry coincide with his first-hand experiences, largely due to the fact that they were not added by him. These illustrations may have very well coincided with the experience of some African-Americans. However, to say that they directly relate to the Dunbar's first-hand experiences overlooks a degree of specificity and personalization of Dunbar as an individual. Ergo, it is extremely difficult to say that the illustrations that people added to Dunbar's poetry without consulting him directly relate to the first-hand experience of this author.