black

Golden Gray

This entry was posted in Jazz and tagged black part black white on by

jazz_coverCharacter: Golden GraySource Text:  Morrison, Toni. Jazz. New York: Vintage International, 2004.

Entry Author:  Shalyn Hopley

Golden Gray is the son of white Vera Louise Gray and black Henry LesTroy. Jazz is not really a story featuring Golden Gray, yet his presence in the story is potent. Golden Gray is the product of an illicit relationship between the daughter of a wealthy Colonel from Vesper County, Vera Louise, and “a Negro boy out from Vienna” (140). Golden Gray is conceived during one her rides with the boy out to the woods, and when Vera Louise tells her parents she is pregnant, wordlessly her family gives her money to “die, or live if you like, elsewhere”, disowning her and her child. Vera and one of the novel’s main character’s (Violet’s) grandmother, True Belle, a slave woman belonging to her family, go to Baltimore and raise the child.Golden Gray is an enigmatic presence in the novel, his real personality and significance hard to determine as he is described over and over by different characters, at times the narrator even restarting her tale of Golden Gray to rewrite what she has already written of him. Golden Gray is named Gray for his mother and the color of his eyes, and golden for his skin tone (139). He is raised as an adopted white child, rather than the son of a black slave and Vera, by Vera and True Belle and is said to be the “light of both their lives” (139). When Golden Gray is told the story of his mixed race heritage, he leaves home to meet and confront his father, Henry LesTroy. Yet on his way there, he happens upon a dark-skinned pregnant woman in the woods who he startles, her attempt to flee ending in her injury. He brings the unconscious woman to the house of his father, where she births the child she is carrying. When his father returns home, he helps Golden with the woman and quickly disarms Golden’s potentially murderous intentions, asking Golden Gray what he expected when he came to find his father (172). Instead, Golden Gray runs away with “Wild”, the woman. Wild is implied to be the mother of Joe Trace, Violet’s husband. Henry LesTroy becomes a father figure for Joe.

While the general content of Golden’s story remains the same, the narrator begins her tale of his venture to Virginia three times, only being satisfied the final time after berating herself for not seeing his motivations:

What was I thinking of? How could I have imagined him so poorly? Not noticed the hurt that was not linked to the color of his skin, or the blood that beat beneath it. But to some other thing that longed for authenticity, for a right to be in this place, effortlessly without needing to acquire a false face, a laughless grin, a talking posture. I have been careless and stupid and it infuriates me to discover (again) how unreliable I am. (160)

The narrator’s claims to know Golden Gray’s story are erased by this passage. She is unreliable, unable to know the true complexity of even this minor character.

Why is Golden Gray present in Jazz? He is connected to all these characters from the main plot, but his own story can at best be considered a supplement, and at worst a tangent. Yet his story is there, highlighting the complicated interwoven histories of the main characters and highlighting the unknowable nature of humanity and human love.

Coleman Silk

This entry was posted in The Human Stain and tagged black Jewish light-skinned passing white on by
humanstain_coverCharacter:  Coleman Silk

Source Text:  Roth, Philip. The Human Stain. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Print.

Entry Author:  Claire McDonald

Coleman Silk is a Jewish professor who teaches classics at Athena College. After spending his academic career as a professor and dean of the college, Silk is accused of making a racist remark about two of his students. Although this accusation is false, Silk is heavily criticized by his fellow professors, which leads him to resign in protest. Following his resignation, Silk begins a friendship with Nathan Zuckerman, an author who acts as the narrator of The Human Stain. At their first meeting, Silk commands that Zuckerman write the story of Silk’s perceived racism and actual innocence. He tells Zuckerman to write his story, but Zuckerman does not know the entirety of Silk’s story until Silk’s death in a car accident.After Silk’s death, Zuckerman learns from Silk’s sister that Silk is not Jewish, as he had known him to be. Instead, Silk is revealed to be a light-skinned black man passing for white. Silk first began to pass as white at a young age, when his boxing instructor, who was known to teach boxing to Jewish teenagers, told him not to mention his race at a match. Silk is told to allow other people to construct their own ideas of him, and this means that he is assumed to be Jewish because of his appearance and his affiliation with this particular instructor. This realization eventually led to Silk’s decision to pass for white and Jewish in all aspects of his life; he is hired by Athena College under the assumption that he is Jewish, and his wife and children all know him as a white Jewish man. It must be noted that Silk grew up before the Civil Rights Movement, and during his childhood and adolescence he was forced to see his highly intelligent father be belittled and mistreated at his menial jobs because of his blackness. This is not a fate that Silk wanted for himself, so he makes the choice to reject his blackness because he thinks that this will enable him to have the life that he wants to live.

Silk’s hidden identity is important to The Human Stain because it reveals an important aspect of the confines of freedom at this point in time. Silk can only obtain the freedom to live his life as he chooses if he is willing to give up his identity as a black man; this shows the institutionalized racism present in academia during the mid-20th century. His choice to pass as white also presents an interesting look at the definition of freedom. After being told that Silk lived his life as a white Jewish man, Zuckerman wonders if Silk’s choice to pass is the ultimate example of American individualism. By this, he means that Silk has completely prioritized his own success over the well-being of anyone else, including his mother, siblings, wife, and children. Roth essentially uses race to convey conflicting definitions of freedom and personal choice as they relate to the general sense of morality present in the U.S. at this moment in history.

Charles Bon

This entry was posted in Absalom Absalom and tagged black father/son Haiti male part black South on by
Absalom, Absalom! cover

Absalom, Absalom! cover

Character:  Charles Bon

Source Text:  Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom! 1936. New York: Random House, 1951.

Entry Author:  Claire McDonald

Charles Bon is the son of protagonist Thomas Sutpen and Sutpen’s first wife, Eulalia Bon Sutpen. During Sutpen’s time spent as a plantation overseer in Haiti, he was offered Eulalia’s hand in marriage after ending a slave rebellion on the plantation. Sutpen assumes that she is of Spanish descent, but she is actually part black, meaning that their son is also part black. Sutpen cannot bear the knowledge that his wife and son are partially black, and so he abandons them and attempts to begin a new life. Eventually, Eulalia and Bon leave Haiti and move to New Orleans.As a student at the University of Mississippi, Bon is admired and practically idolized by many of his classmates, including Sutpen’s recognized son, Henry Sutpen. Henry and Bon become friends at school, and Henry brings Bon to Sutpen’s Hundred for Christmas; at the time, Henry is unaware that Bon is his half-brother. Bon’s reunion with Sutpen poses a significant threat to Sutpen, as Bon is evidence of Sutpen’s past actions. However, he refuses to acknowledge him as his son until Bon and Judith, Sutpen’s daughter, express their desire to marry each other. Sutpen is furious about this, but his anger is more directed at Bon’s perceived blackness than at the fact that Judith and Bon are half-siblings.Just as Sutpen disowned Bon because of his blackness, Henry eventually does the same. Henry and Bon are close friends while they are attending University of Mississippi together, and Henry initially repudiates his father when he learns that Bon is his half-brother and that Sutpen had abandoned him and his mother. He continues to support Bon’s wish to marry Judith until Sutpen reveals that Bon is partially black. Henry, much like his father, is also disgusted and infuriated by the thought of Bon tainting their family’s pure bloodline. Bon’s death comes at the hands of Henry, who shoots him at the gate of Sutpen’s Hundred.

Bon’s race is important to Absalom, Absalom! because of his father and brother’s response to it. Despite the fact that both Bon and Henry are Sutpen’s biological sons, Sutpen rejects Bon because he cannot accept the fact that Bon is partially black. Bon’s status as black also means that Sutpen’s dream of becoming a Southern aristocrat cannot be achieved; Bon cannot inherit his father’s plantation because of it, meaning that Sutpen’s goal of creating a legacy cannot be achieved. Bon also signifies the desecration of the Sutpen bloodline’s purity, which Sutpen also cannot abide by. Faulkner is able to use Bon as a way to comment on Southern perceptions of race. Because Bon is considered to be black, he brings shame upon his own father because he is seen as subordinate; the bond between father and son is severed because Sutpen refuses to accept a son who is, by the one-drop rule, black.