Faculty of Arts and Philosophy 2006-2007

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE BIRD AND THE FISH FALL IN LOVE?

A thematic exploration of identity and racial issues in Richard Powers’ The Time of Our Singing

Supervisor: Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the Prof. Dr. Kristiaan Versluys requirements for the degree of ‘Licentiaat in de Taal - en Letterkunde: Germaanse Talen’

by Tessa De Smet

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This dissertation could not have been written without the help and support of a few people. I am particularly grateful to my supervisor, Professor Dr. Kristiaan Versluys, for his encouraging words, helpful comments and constructive feedback. Thanks also go to Romanie for introducing me to the work of Richard Powers, to Froya, Jordi and my parents for their support and unconditional trust (thanks Dad for proofreading!) and to all my friends in Bruges, Ghent and elsewhere for making spare time as carefree and enjoyable as possible!

Thank you all! Tessa

Ghent, May 2007

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1

PART 1 : Theoretical Framework 4

CHAPTER 1: Race 5

What’s in a Name: The Many Meanings of Race 5 A Historical Framework: Past and Present Race Theories 8 A Future Beyond Race? America’s Hopeful Dream 12

CHAPTER 2: Identity (& Race) 16

2.1 Who is it that can tell me who I am? Identity m/Matters 16 2.2 The Persistent Effects of Colour Labelling: Racial Identity 22 2.3 Neither Black nor White yet Both: Crossing Racial Boundaries 28

PART 2 : Literary Analysis 35

CHAPTER 3: Characterisation: A Composition in Black & White 36

3.1 Interracial Literature: A Literary Tradition 37 3.2 The Portrait of a Family: Fish or Bird? 41 3.3 Racial Identity: The Theoretical Models applied 49

CHAPTER 4: Grand Novels have Grand Ideas: Race, Culture & History 55

4.1 Culture: Who Gets to Sing What? 55 4.2 History: Uncanting the can’t 60 4.3 Race: Older Than History and Build to Outlast It 67

CONCLUSION 74

REFRENCES 76

INTRODUCTION

Richard Powers, sometimes characterised as ‘the greatest author you’ve never heard of’ (in Flanders §1), was born in Illinois, in June 1957. After reading physics, rhetoric and literature at the University of Illinois, Powers worked for a while as a computer programmer and a freelance data processor before he quite abruptly quitted his job to devote his time to writing. His first novel, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, was published in 1985. Since this highly praised debut, Powers has written eight more novels. Slowly but surely, he has gained a devoted flock of admirers, especially in scholarly circles. He is regularly compared to illustrious writers such as Thomas Pynchon, Jonathan Franzen and Don De Lillo and over the years he has been granted various prestigious awards (the MacArthur Fellowship and the National Book Award, among others). The Time of Our Singing, published in 2003, is Powers’ eighth novel and is claimed by critics to be one of his most accessible ones so far. Powers’ novels show certain recurrent patterns and concerns. They are generally described as intellectual and highbrow, as he foregrounds complex and ambitious themes such as molecular genetics (The Gold Bug Variations), artificial intelligence (Galatea 2.2), the manufacture of soap (Gain) and virtual reality (Plowing the Dark), which he furthermore presents in dazzling and architectural plot structures. A noteworthy and typical feature of his work is the fusion of art and science, two notions Powers is particularly interested in. From a very early age, the author has been pulled between literature and music, on the one hand, and science and technology, on the other. He was a talented student of vocal music, he played the cello, guitar, clarinet and saxophone, he read the Iliad and the Odyssey and was attracted to the first-generation European modernists. At the same time, he was fascinated by Darwinian concepts, palaeontology, oceanography, archaeology and physics (Dodd §2). In his novels, he draws heavily on these personal fields of interest. The relationship between art and science is a central feature of his work. In this thesis, we will focus on Powers’ eighth novel, The Time of Our Singing. It is a family saga written in the tradition of the Great American Novel. As in his

1 previous novels, art and science are contrasted. The story cleverly incorporates theoretical physics (Einstein’s relativity theory and notions on time) as well as musical technique and history (the repertoire discussed in the novel includes besides mediaeval a cappella songs also twentieth-century gangsta rap). Apart from music and time, there is one other crucial theme in the novel: race. The Time of Our Singing tells the story of a biracial family struggling to find its place in twentieth-century America. It reveals the deep roots of racism in American life while dealing with issues of cultural ownership, identity and racial prejudice and discrimination. Powers is one of many writers who have tackled the subject of race and described the dehumanising horrors of racism and racial violence. The aim of this dissertation is to specifically examine the way in which Powers deals with the concepts of race and identity, how he uses common ideas, dominant paradigms and conventional representations to create his fictional characters and story. The study is divided into two larger parts. The first part provides a theoretical framework that will be used as an analytic tool and will be applied to The Time of Our Singing in a more text-oriented, second part. The first, introductory, chapter will serve as a useful starting point for our discussion. Broadly explaining the notion of race, it examines the various meanings of the concept, while contrasting past and current race theories. The disparity between the essentialist, biological approach on race and the social constructionist perspective will be investigated and the possibility of a future beyond race will be evaluated. The second chapter focuses on identity issues. After a general and more abstract section, the specific relationship between race and identity will be looked at. We will first examine the procedure of identity formation and the differences between achieved and ascribed identities, self - and external identification and individual and group identities. Then, the process of racial identification will be analysed and different theories of racial identity development will be considered. A study of mixed-race identity and identification will conclude this first, theoretical part. The next two chapters are devoted to a detailed analysis of Powers’ The Time of Our Singing. In chapter three, Powers’ characterisation will be investigated. The purpose is to situate the novel within the tradition of interracial literature and to examine whether Powers’ portrayal of mixed-race people either confirms or refutes the

2 dominant representations and themes. The theoretical identity models introduced in part 1 will be applied to the fictional characters. Chapter four, finally, focuses on race and more specifically on its relationship with culture and history. Issues of cultural ownership and geneticism will be considered and Powers’ fictionalisation of historic events and characters will be investigated. Special attention is devoted to recurring motifs in the novel and Powers’ position in the race debate will be assessed. Does the novel confirm the social constructionist view or the essentialist approach and does it offer a final conclusion on racial matters?

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PART 1 Theoretical Framework

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In this first part, the abstractions race and identity will be introduced and explained by means of common scholarly conceptions, schemes and theories. Chapter 1 will focus on race matters, while chapter 2 describes identity questions. This theoretical overview will not attempt to be exhaustive. Since the amount of literature dealing with the concepts of race and identity is in itself enormous, it will only seek to offer some interesting insights and relevant models and tools for analysing, exploring and critically assessing the notion of (racial) identity in Richard Power’s novel The Time of Our Singing (cf. Part 2).

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CHAPTER 1: RACE

In 1903, the American sociologist and social reformer W.E.B. DuBois famously proclaimed that the twentieth century would be characterised by ‘the problem of the color line’ (13). It suffices to look at the former Apartheid Regime in South-Africa and the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 60s in the United States to understand how prophetic his statement was. Though specific situations may have changed and improved over time, race has stayed nonetheless a significant and constant theme throughout history. Its impact on social identities and the lives of individuals continues to be huge. People are still divided in various groups based on skin colour and other (physical) characteristics and incidents of racial segregation, prejudice, discrimination and injustice remain ubiquitous. As a concept, race is regarded as both controversial and problematic. Conflicting views and changing perspectives make it one of the most hotly debated topics in the domain of social sciences. This chapter carefully addresses the complexity of the notion. To avoid all misinterpretation and confusion, it looks at the etymology of the word, considering various suggested definitions. A concise historical overview examines past and current race theories and evaluates the possibility of a ‘future beyond race’. The focus throughout the chapter will be on black and white racial problems in the United States, since they are central to our research topic.

1.1 What’s in a Name: The Many Meanings of Race

-- To call forth a concept, a word is needed. (Antoine Lavoisier, Elementary Treatise on Chemistry)

A good starting point for a discussion about race would be a precise and unambiguous definition of the term. For use of language and choice of terminology will prove to be very important in the approach to racial issues and also, as K. Anthony Appiah argues (1996: 33), in order to talk intelligently about the concept of race, it is useful and necessary to know what and how people think about it. What is commonly understood by the word race? When and how is the term used? Does it have the same

5 meaning for all people in all situations? Is there, in other words, a specific and unique idea or existing reality to which it refers? And does the word have particular (political or ethical) connotations? These questions, however straightforward they may seem, have no simple answers. Race is a confusing and ambiguous term, often used imprecisely and charged with strong emotions. It is ‘an unstable and “decentred” complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle’ (Omi and Winant 68). There is no ultimate terminology that is accepted by everyone and without qualification. Every attempt at a definition of race inevitably lacks precision and gradation. In the course of time, the word has been used in a wide range of meanings with many ‘variations among national and cultural understandings’ (Winant 170). Coming to a better knowledge of the concept may therefore require an exploration of the history of the term. What did race come to signify over the years? The specific origins of the word are unknown, but according to various sources and etymological dictionaries race entered the English language in the sixteenth century. It did not have a precise meaning at the time but functioned as a ‘folk idea’, ‘a general categorizing term, similar to and interchangeable with such terms as type, kind, sort, breed, and even species’ (Smedley and Smedley 19). Race could refer to ‘a breed or stock of animals’ (1580), as well as to ‘a class of wine with a characteristic flavour’ (1520), it could denote ‘a genus, species, or variety of plants’ (1596), ‘a set or class of persons’ (1500-1520), etc. (OED 69). In its reference to human beings, the original use of the word was primarily in phrases like ‘the human race, the race of men or mankind’ (OED 69), whereas its modern meaning as one of the main groups that humans can be divided into based on physical characteristics (such as skin colour, hair type and eye formation) was not established until the end of the seventeenth century. Coinciding with colonial expansion and supremacy, slave trade and the rise of a capitalist economy, the word race became primarily used to rank people. A hierarchy of races emerged, ‘with white Europeans deemed the most civilised and black Africans as the most savage’ (McLeod 77). It was the beginning of ‘a new way of structuring society’ (Smedley and Smedley 19) and it signified the start of colour-coded racism which is still visible and widespread today. The term has, however, not exclusively been used in this particular sense. Since the seventeenth century, race has also frequently

6 been applied to distinguish between linguistic units (‘Arab race’), religious groups (‘Jewish race’) and even political entities (‘French race’) (Encyclopædia Britannica §3). In contemporary discussions, race is often connected to or mixed up with ethnicity. Like race, ethnicity is a contested term. It is used mainly to ‘denote groups of people who share common national or geographical origins, values and beliefs, and customs and traditions’ (The Open University 14). While some consider race as an objective category functioning completely on its own, others view race as merely one of the dimensions and aspects of ethnicity (for a full discussion see Sollors 1986:36). Fact is that the two phenomena are closely linked. This ambiguity adds of course to the confusion over the meaning of the word race. Which aspects (physical, biological or cultural) ultimately determine a person’s race? Can racial categorisation ever be rationalised, objectively legitimised? In fact, at no point in history have scholars agreed upon which features are central to the identification of race, nor has there been consensus about the actual number of races, let alone on the question of whether there are any human races at all (Encyclopædia Britannica §5, Appiah 1998:28). Presently, the term race has been largely discredited in academic discussions. This is reflected in the writings of many authors who make use of inverted commas when talking about the concept. In doing so they signal their unease with the term (Parker and Song 17), they emphasise that race has no transparent meaning (McLeod 174) and distance themselves from the colonial and racist connotations fundamentally associated with the word (The Open University 13). The most important reason, however, for these scholars to use quotation marks is to underline that race is not biologically based as was previously believed, but a social construction without any observable or natural essence. This ‘social constructionist perspective’ is currently widely accepted and dates back to the early twentieth century. It has opened a whole new debate with new insights, new questions and new problems, issues which are discussed more fully in the next section where an overview of different race approaches will further elucidate the notion of race.

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1.2 A Historical Framework: Past and Present Race Theories

-- To portray a phenomenon, a concept is needed. (Antoine Lavoisier, Elementary Treatise on Chemistry)

It may seem somewhat encyclopaedic and not directly relevant to our central research topic to include and elaborate upon various race theories. However, since theories always reflect and influence social reality, we believe it is worthwhile nonetheless to consider how in the course of time the concept of race has been repositioned within the social sciences. In a historical overview, we will therefore examine how race relations were understood and acted upon at particular moments in time and explain how different perspectives on race have emerged due to changing social factors, shifting political situations and technological developments. Especially the progress made in the field of genetics will prove to be crucial. It has influenced and shaped new views on race while bringing ill repute to the traditional and older theories (Winant 169, Gilroy 15). The first attempts to categorise groups of people along racial lines go back to at least the seventeenth century, still, it was not until the late eighteenth century that race gained an important and firm position within biological and sociological studies. Due to economic expansion, global imperialism and colonisation, race differences became more and more apparent and imperative at that time. White Europeans were increasingly confronted with groups of people who looked and behaved differently from themselves and felt the need to clearly define their relationship with these other people. Race was thus invoked to account for a new social order, established by European explorers and colonisers. It had to justify the exploitation and subordination of colonised peoples, the barbarous practices of slavery and the inequality in economic and political power. Up until the early decades of the twentieth century, all popular and scientific discussion about race was overshadowed by an essentialist and biological approach. This dominant race theory treated the notion as a natural fact, ‘a single, undifferentiated magnitude’ (Gilroy 38) with ‘essential and given, immutable’ characteristics, coded in the human body (Winant 174). Biophysical characteristics were used as primary boundary markers. People who had certain distinct morphological features in common,

8 such as skin colour, bone structure, eye formation and hair type, were said to belong to the same race. All sorts of scientific tests and biological experiments (e.g. the measurement of skulls) had to explain and bear witness to ‘vast’ racial differences (Encyclopædia Britannica §48-49). Races were also deemed to reflect ‘heritable traits such as abilities, propensities for certain behaviors, and other sociocultural characteristics’ (Hirschman 2004:408). It was generally believed that all members of a particular race had the same essence, that they shared similar genes. Hence all whites were commonly held to have a so-called white nature, all blacks were said to have a black makeup, etc… (Zack 1998:5). The biological qualities assigned to non-whites, and Africans in particular, were mainly socially devalued peculiarities. Black people were stigmatised as inferior and subhuman and, compared to white Europeans, they were considered to be less intelligent, less beautiful, backward and even uncivilised. A racial hierarchy was thus established with white cultured Europeans praised as the superior race. This grading of people was racist in its very nature. White skin and customs became the norm, while everything and everybody else was perceived as a deviation, a poor mutation (Omi and Winant 14). To support this statement, the ancient idea of the Great Chain of Being – which ranked all living creatures, starting from the most simple organisms to ultimately arrive at God – was adapted and reinforced (Henze 312). It effectively incorporated racial inequality as part of a natural and fixed order which should never be disturbed. From the early twentieth century onwards, the biological race approach was gradually losing credit. Not only were there anti-racist and anti-colonial movements which questioned social disparities and strove for democratic ideals (Winant 175), racial biologism became especially contested when important genetic discoveries challenged its basic assumptions and beliefs. The central axiom which claimed that race and racial differences were genetically based, i.e. that a joint genetic code grouped and divided people in different races, could not be accepted any longer. Any hope for a uniform criterion of race had to be abandoned when empirical DNA research proved that ‘there is as much genetic variation within as there is between so-called races’ (Parker and Song 4). Genetic diversity was not distributed along racial lines, as was previously believed, but appeared as ‘a continuum with no clear breaks delineating racial groups’ (Marshall 654). All earlier statements about shared essences and the suggested

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‘correlations between the biological and the moral, literary, or psychological characters of human beings’, turned out to be untrue and based on pure speculation (Appiah 1996:71). This new state of affairs naturally demanded a complete revision of the understanding of the notion of race. The innovative work of early anthropologists and sociologists was crucial in this respect. Howard Winant recognises the important contributions and ‘path-breaking racial theorizing’ of W.E.B. DuBois and scholars attached to ‘The Chicago School’ of Sociology. The anthropologist Franz Boas is also named as very influential in formulating new ideas and views on human races (Winant 175-176). Thanks to their, and many others’, empirical research and enquiries, the old essentialist theory was given up slowly but surely and race was approached instead as a social concept. In this view, races and racial categories were no longer believed to exist as such, but were seen as socially constructed phenomena, ideological fictions. ‘The races biologists once claimed to have discovered in nature’ were now judged as ‘the illegitimate offspring of an invented classification scheme (…) imposed on nature’ (Gannett 323). The new found insights and beliefs, which were formulated and accepted at first by a relatively small but influential number of scholars and academics, were further reinforced and spread among the general public due to various key events and significant evolutions in the course of the twentieth century. In the introduction to his work on racism (1-3), George M. Fredrickson identifies the practice of racial segregation in the United States induced by the Jim Crow laws, and the excesses of the Nazi regime during the Holocaust, as two crucial developments and vicious incidents which greatly discredited the traditional scientific race approach. These episodes in modern history gave the old theory a negative, unsavoury and racist reputation. For both Hitler in Germany and the white supremacists in the American South had drawn upon the essentialist race concept, with its natural ranking of races, to justify their extermination and brutal treatment of Jews and blacks respectively. As a result of all these scientific developments and social events, the constructionist race approach gained more and more support. Today, it is the prevailing view on race. Contemporary scholars tend to regard race as an arbitrary and social category. There is considerable agreement about the concept’s socio-historical

10 character. This general understanding does not mean, however, that all controversy surrounding the meaning and position of race has disappeared. Race is still a subject of considerable debate. A cyclical return of older theories is observed. There are, for example, despite everything, ‘ongoing beliefs in essentialism’ (Zack 1998:5). As regular as clockwork, scholars present new data and so-called objective evidence in an attempt to challenge the consensus view and re-establish a biological basis for race. The sociologist Robin O. Andreasen, for example, has published an article in which she argues in favour of the essentialist race theory. Races, she says, are ‘ancestor- descendant sequences of breeding populations, or groups of such sequences, that share a common origin’ (Andreasen 214). Armand Marie Leroi takes a similar stand when he signals the end of race as a social construct in his essay “A Family Tree in Every Gene”. All these attempts, Omi and Winant argue, ‘seek to remove the concept of race from fundamental social, political, or economic determination. They suggest instead that the truth of race lies in innate characteristics’ (59). There is also the question of culture which often causes notes of discord in contemporary race discussions. Many, who feel uncomfortable with the legacy of the traditional race approach, have recently sought new ways to explain otherness and define group differences. They invoke ideologies in which the old biological essences are replaced with cultural essences. Members of ethnic and national groups are supposed to share a common culture and tradition, with specific values and a particular way of living. This ‘New Racism’, as Paul Gilroy calls it, is a cultural geneticism which is ‘no less vicious or brutal’ than biological determinism (34). It challenges the multicultural society as it displays an inability and reluctance to accept cultural differences. By assigning essential cultures to racial groups, cultural geneticism ‘deprives white people of jazz and black people of Shakespeare’ (Appiah 1996:90). This new race approach is prevalent in both the United States and Europe where it echoes and reaffirms ‘many of the fateful characteristics associated with eighteenth-century racial groups’ (Gilroy 33). Culture, in this view, is made to do the work of race (Fredrickson 141). The persistent attempts of some to reinforce the scientific meaning of race, the beliefs of others in a more cultural approach, make clear that race continues to be a contested issue. Just as there is no definition of race that manages to describe all

11 different aspects and gradations of the concept, there is no theory that is so complete and well-reasoned that it is embraced by everyone at all times. Race is a socio-historical concept, a phenomenon that is subject to constant change and different interpretations. It only obtains concrete meaning in specific historical, cultural and political contexts: race is ‘a variable which is shaped by broader societal forces’ (Omi and Winant 60). If race is indeed just an empty category with no real existence in nature, the question arises whether a future without any reference to races and racial classification is possible then? Is a change of politics and mentality enough to make an end to racial discrimination and prejudice?

1.3 A Future Beyond Race? America’s Hopeful Dream

Until the colour of a man's skin Is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes Me say war That until the basic human rights are equally Guaranteed to all, without regard to race Dis a war (Bob Marley, War)

In 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed aloud of a colour-blind society in which all men are created and treated equally. The young black minister pleaded for freedom and justice when he expressed his hope for a world without racism, cultural ranking or any other form of discrimination. While the position of blacks in the United States has definitely improved since the turbulent 1960s, stating that King’s dream has become reality, that racial intolerance and hierarchy now belong completely to the past, would be an exaggeration. Race and racism are still very much alive: ‘Bob Marley’s war’ has not yet ended. But what about the future? Can the United States turn the dark pages of its history and leave behind the racism of its past? Is a race-neutral society possible and how can this be accomplished? Once again, unanimity of opinion on the issue is nowhere in sight, as scholars from various disciplines do not agree on how best to address, let alone end, racial problems. Should public policy strive for a colour-blind approach or is this merely a smokescreen for denial and is colour-consciousness perhaps the best way to establish a

12 multiracial and -cultural democracy? Some argue that the only way to make an end to present hierarchies is by rejecting all schemes of racial classification. These academics (Robert Miles, among others) reason that, since there are no (biological) races, it is useless and ethically unacceptable to maintain race as a social category. Race is seen as a false abstraction that should be avoided altogether, for it is assumed that by eliminating the concept, all difficulties associated with it will disappear automatically. This aversion of race and the refusal to see and employ it as a tool for analysis is especially common in European sociological debates and is, according to Parker and Song, ‘possibly due to the greater influence of Marxism and class analysis’ (5). Still, not everyone agrees that the abolition of the notion is the best way to take care of racial issues. There is a group of sociologists who recognise and agree with the ‘scientific invalidity’ of race but who acknowledge at the same time the social reality and daily actuality of the phenomenon (Parker and Song 5). They claim that, since race proves to be so real in its social consequences and effects, ‘abolishing the concept would fatally hamper our understanding of this important dimension’ (Vermeulen 94). Rather than denying and avoiding race, these authors try to understand why ‘the label works despite the absence of an essence’ (Appiah 1996:81). They examine why race is so influential, why it still retains such an important place in American experience and how this can be changed. A thorough revision of the concept is seen as an absolute necessity: if race could only lose some of its power, authority and negative connotations, if ‘it is simultaneously and categorically resisted as a means of stratifying national or global societies’, then, Howard Winant claims, ‘like religion or language, race can be accepted as part of the spectrum of the human condition’ (183). Yet, given that racial equality is not a natural process happening of its own accord, our main questions remain unanswered: what actions should be taken for this impartiality and new way of thinking to be achieved and what role should the government play? Since the 1960s, the American government has gradually passed legislation based on colour-blind principles in order to make an end to and prevent discrimination on the work floor, in social health services, the education system and many other public domains (Wright 136). Affirmative action programmes and other egalitarian measures have been introduced ‘to remedy the fact that nonwhites and women have fewer opportunities than white males for higher education and professional employment’

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(Zack 1998:13). It specifically involves arrangements which help to create more racial, ethnic and gender diversity by promoting and favouring minorities, generating extra job positions, introducing quota systems, etc... This kind of affirmative action is not always greeted with the same enthusiasm. Many conflicting arguments have been offered for and against the principle. Proponents of affirmative action believe it will provide, in the end, fair and equal opportunities to all. Amy Gutmann recognises three ways in which this may be done, namely ‘by breaking down racial stereotypes, by creating identity role models for black children and, as important, by creating diversity role models for all citizens’ (1996:131, italics in original). Affirmative action is thus seen as a method to get people to accept the fact that talent comes in more than one colour. Opponents, on the other hand, warn for reverse discrimination and racism. They argue that affirmative action, however well-intentioned, is polarising by its very nature and may therefore increase racial tensions. Lisa Newton, for example, believes that affirmative policy is unjust because it continues to evaluate and privilege people on the basis of skin colour (or sex) and not on actual merit and quality: the practice of reverse discrimination ‘destroys justice, law, equality, and citizenship itself, and replaces them with power struggles and popularity contests’ (54). Affirmative action has also been contested, especially by neoconservatives and the far right, because it is said to challenge the fundamental and liberal ideals (like individualism, market-based opportunity and limited state-intervention), which are considered essential to American life and character (Omi and Winant 126-127). Whereas the active role of the government in protecting racial minorities is today recognised by most (Appiah 1996:180), the above discussion makes clear that it will never be accepted without contestation and that legislation can never be enough to end racial problems. Affirmative action and colour-blind policy may add to the racial debate, increase public awareness and alter general opinions on race matters (as the results of an ‘eye-opening’ study conducted by Paul M. Sniderman and Thomas Piazza demonstrate, see Gutmann 1996:148-151), it will never be the ultimate response to racial injustice. Race can not be silenced by colour-blind politics as long as American society is not colour-blind and fair itself (Gutmann 1996:177-178). Is there then absolutely no immediate or distant prospect that race will ever be completely and finally abandoned? Recent polls suggest that many Americans are quite

14 pessimistic about the possibility of a future beyond race. 66% of the blacks who filled in a survey and 45% of the whites questioned, believed that race relations will remain problematic in the United States (see Philipsen 190). Scholarly and popular views seem to agree on this point. Omi and Winant, among others, firmly claim that ‘race will always be at the center of the American experience’ (6, italics in original). By referring to its long history and pervasive present, the two scholars assert that race cannot and will not be overcome. In 1997, president Bill Clinton acknowledged the enormous challenge America has to confront and face up to if it ever wants to be completely race free. To conclude this chapter, we quote his winged words:

‘Can we fulfill the promise of America by embracing all our citizens of all races? Can we become one America in the 21st century? Money cannot buy this goal, power cannot compel it, technology cannot create it. This is something that can come only from the human spirit.’

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CHAPTER 2: IDENTITY (& RACE)

In the previous chapter we have briefly touched upon some of the problems and issues raised by the study of race. One of the questions dealt with was whether it is likely and viable that one day skin colour will be of no more significance than the colour of one’s eyes. An ultimate response to this question was somewhat avoided, though it has become clear that many people have a rather gloomy picture of the future when race problems and relations are under debate. Race is so omnipresent in the life of many American citizens that a fundamental change is considered implausible in the near future. Especially in identity matters, race turns out to be very influential and formative: racialized thinking plays an imperative role in determining and defining social identities. From ancient through contemporary times, philosophers, scholars, novelists and poets have been preoccupied with the notion of identity, struggling to find answers to the questions of who we are, where we come from, how we construct conceptions of self and how these images may conflict with how other people view and define us. This chapter focuses on these and similar identity issues. The purpose is to first look at the notion of identity in more general and abstract terms before examining it in its specific relation to race. Different aspects of identity will be considered. Specific attention will be devoted to racial identification while an analysis of mixed-race identity will conclude this chapter.

2.1 Who is it that can tell me who I am? Identity m/Matters

-- I seize the word identity. It is a key word. You hear it over and over again. On this word will focus, around this word will coagulate, a dozen issues, shifting, shading into each other. (Robert Penn Warren, Who speaks for the Negro?)

At first sight, identity may seem a transparent and unproblematic notion, easy to characterise. When taking a closer look, however, it becomes clear that like race, identity is a complicated and multifaceted concept which defies clear-cut definitions.

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Identity can ‘harness an exceptional plurality of meanings’ (Gilroy 98). The term does not only convey individual identities, it is also used with premodifiers in expressions like ‘Jewish identity’, ‘American identity’, ‘sexual and gender identity’, etc… An added difficulty is that in a rapidly changing, multicultural and postmodern society, like the United States today, issues of identity have become more visible, powerful and imperative than ever. In search of both personal uniqueness and group membership, people try to create and adopt viable identities, for they strongly feel the need to define and explain themselves and their relationship with others. Social identification or classification proves to be especially consequential. As a source of ‘mystic varieties of kinship’ (Gilroy 106) as well as conflict, social identities not only affect and determine people’s ‘status and functioning in society’ (Zack 1998:1), they also form the key to understanding the construction of larger (national, ethnic,…) communities. How should this be interpreted? What factors constitute a person’s identity? How powerful can group identity be and are we free to choose any kind of identity we want? This section will seek to offer adequate and possible answers to these questions. It will address the mechanics behind identity formation and deal with the differences between individual and collective identities. But first it will look for a comprehensive description of the notion, for what is understood by the term identity. Being a tricky concept whose meaning and significance have utterly changed in the course of time, identity can be defined in a number of ways. We will spotlight two of its major (and fairly recent) uses, namely Erikson’s psychological approach to identity and the (postmodern) sociological perspective. The main difference between both approaches will lie in their response to the question ‘whether identity is to be understood as something internal that persists through change or as something ascribed from without that changes according circumstance’ (Gleason 918). It should be noted that for our comparison and treatment of the two usages, we have drawn heavily on Philip Gleason’s article ‘Identifying Identity’ (1983) which offers a very useful semantic overview of the different meanings and interpretations assigned to the term identity. Erik Erikson was a German psychologist and analyst whose work and research on identity was very influential in the 1950s and 1960s. He worked in the Freudian tradition and is especially known today for coining the phrase ‘identity crisis’, by which

17 he referred to a ‘climactic turning point’ in maturation (Gleason 914), a moment when people lose ‘a sense of personal sameness and historical continuity’ (Erikson 17). In his writings, Erikson approached identity as ‘a process “located” in the core of the individual and yet also in the core of his communal culture, a process which establishes, in fact, the identity of those two identities’ (Erikson qtd. in Gleason 914, italics in original). Erikson affirmed that identity involves an interaction between the internal development of the individual human being and his participation in society, the surrounding social and cultural milieu. However, change and crisis notwithstanding, Erikson emphasised the ‘inner continuity of personality’ as he claimed that identity is at bottom a fixed quality, assigned to people at birth and persistent ‘through all the changes the individual undergoes in passing through the stages of the life cycle’ (Gleason 918-919). Identity is thus, according to Erikson, a fixed quality, sited somewhere ‘in the deep psychic structure of the individual’ (Gleason 918). This rigid and psychological conception of identity can be contrasted with a more fluid, sociological standpoint, popularised by scholars like Nelson N. Foote and Peter L. Berger. These sociologists challenge the assumption that identities are solid, given and continuous units. Instead, they assert that a person’s identity is plural, flexible, contextual and relational in character, that identity is ‘a process, continuously created and re-created in each social situation that one enters’ (Berger qtd. in Gleason 918). It is this sociological approach (in a slightly adapted version though) which is the most popular view today. Postmodern thinkers dispute the notion of essentialism, that is, identities are no longer believed to be monolithic or one-sided entities. Much rather they are said to consist of ‘multiple selves and multiple identities’ (Miehls 235) among which an individual can easily switch or choose. When asked to describe their personal identity, people may refer, among other things, to their gender, age, profession, nationality, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, class and hobbies; a whole range of elements from which they can pick those facets which they deem relevant and important. A person’s identity is constituted by a complex and constant interplay of various parts and pieces, traits and values,… Identities are also subject to contextual factors. They are not fixed within people but created dialogically (Taylor 32) and are thus highly dynamic: identity is ‘a living set of relations that must be constantly negotiated and struggled over’ (Giroux 188). This

18 standpoint is confirmed by cultural theorist Stuart Hall who argues that we should stop ‘thinking of identity as an already accomplished fact’ and approach it instead ‘as a “production”, which is never complete, always in progress, and always constituted within, not outside representation’ (222). Identities can change over time and according to context. Different elements become important in different settings and not everyone attaches the same importance or meaning to the same aspects: ‘some people wear their identity lightly while others wear their identity really heavily’ (Philoso?hy Talk). Not all identities are immediately negotiable though, for some aspects of identity are permanent and embedded. A distinction is usually made between ‘achieved’ and ‘ascribed’ identities (Sollors 1986:37). Whereas the former involve a high degree of self-determination and chosen connections and stress ‘our ability as mature free agents and architects of our fates’ (Sollors 1986:6), ascribed identities imply ‘pre-given particularities’ which are externally defined and ‘thrust upon you’ (Gilroy 106). People can more or less choose their religious affiliation and their profession, yet, as a rule, they cannot decide on their gender or race: ‘you have to accept that certain things are given by your social circumstances, your biology, your history’ (Appiah, in Philoso?hy Talk); still you can, to a certain extent, determine for yourself how much these aspects will direct and regulate your life. Socio-ecological processes may be crucial, they are however not normative:

Where my ascriptive identity is one on which almost all my fellow citizens agree, I am likely to have little sense of choice about whether the identity is mine; though I can choose how central my identification with it will be – choose, that is, how much I will organize my life around that identity. (Appiah 1996:80)

Identities are not entirely self-achieved or decided upon. This is a statement that requires some serious consideration. It is indeed useful and necessary to analyse the processes of identity construction, in order to know how identity exactly works and how potent it can be. Who or what decides how we define ourselves? Can we be whoever we want to be or is identity just a cultural inheritance? In his article ‘Identity: American Dreaming’, Richard Powers is appalled and astonished to find that 85 percent of the readers of The New York Times Magazine strongly believe that there are absolutely no

19 boundaries to opportunity, that people can achieve and become everything they hanker for in life. Powers argues that this ‘belief in a transformable future’ and ‘dream of unlimited self-realization’ is absurd, since America’s history of slavery and segregation has made clear that what an American wants to become largely depends on ‘who he is allowed to be’ (Powers §5, italics mine). Society and culture can impose serious constraints on personal freedom, opportunity and identity. Identification can be defined as ‘the appropriation of and commitment to a particular identity or series of identities’. It is a process which ‘proceeds by naming’ (Foote qtd. in Gleason 916). To identify is to accept ‘the name given by others’, ‘the assignment to a certain category’ (Gleason 916). This definition echoes the modern consensus view which recognises that identification itself is not a purely voluntary act (Appiah 1996:80) yet ‘subject to outside societal forces’ (Halvorson §11). Identities are to a great extent handed down to us by other people, determined by ancestral bonds, society, culture and history. Identities are constructed and negotiated and therefore fluid in nature and open to interpretation. Naomi Zack (1998:2) distinguishes three entities which contribute to and affect our personal identities. First of all, she asserts that by making individual choices, we are ourselves responsible for determining our self-image. The phenomenon of same-group expectation (‘the identities of others of the same group to which we belong’) is also crucial. As for the third supplier, Zack refers to the image and expectations of ‘the members of groups different from our own’ which have a powerful effect and lasting influence on our personal identity. There can be a mismatch between your own sense of self (self-identification) and how the world wishes to see you (external classification). A person may think of himself as X, while society views him as Y. This can happen when people are reduced to only one aspect of their identity or when external agents completely deny or reject a person’s self-image to enforce their own views. A conflicting, distorted and misleading picture of one’s self thus arises. The range of personal choice in identity matters is often limited and usually depends on the larger categories (race, class, gender, sexuality, …) one belongs to (Zack 1998:2). Some groups have a higher social status and are more powerful than others. This pervasive form of inequality and discrimination can ‘motivate people toward social interconnection in which individuality is renounced or dissolved into the larger whole’ (Gilroy 101). To understand this process, we need to

20 examine the relation between individual and collective identities. While the two concepts are in actuality closely connected and intertwined, it is interesting nonetheless to investigate some differences and examine how and why the phenomenon of group identification can prompt both practices of solidarity and discrimination. K. Anthony Appiah explains collective and individual identities as the two major dimensions that constitute and determine a person’s identity. The personal, individual component is made up by ‘the socially or morally important features of the person’ (1996:93). It involves aspects like intelligence, charm, wit, cupidity,... According to Paul Gilroy, this individual part of an identity is continually negotiated and cultivated for it is ‘shaped in the marketplace, modified by the cultural industries, managed and orchestrated in localized institutions and settings like schools, neighborhoods, and workplaces’ (106). The collective dimension, on the other hand, is formed by broader societal, political and cultural aspects. It is the identification of people with a certain race, gender, religion, sexuality, nationality, etc... Collective social identities embrace the idea of belonging. They rely on the discourse of ‘us and them’ and generate universal expectations about ‘the other’. A fundamental and consequential sameness among the members of groups (Appiah calls it ‘social categories, kinds of person’ 1996:93) is presumed. This sameness often displays itself in shared characteristics or consciousness, in networks of solidarity and sometimes in collective action (Brubaker and Cooper 7-8). As mentioned before, certain social groups are approached and viewed rather negatively. They are given harmful connotations and destructive associations, which create obstacles instead of opportunities for those who make these collective identities central to their individual identities (Gutmann 1994: xi). In the United States, the WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) have always been the most powerful section of society. Deviation from this norm (being female, homosexual, black, Catholic or Jewish) may entail serious limitations on good fortune. People who have these characteristics often encounter assaults on their self-esteem and respect. Struggle against this consistent and discriminative form of oppression may lead to group cohesion and shared aims and objectives. They seek recognition. Identity can thus become a powerful weapon, ‘a silent sign that closes down the possibility of communication’ between different nations or races, ‘different islands of particularity’

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(Gilroy 103). One need not look far to find examples of violence and hostilities between groups. Cases of nationalism, racism, ethnic and homophobic attacks are widespread. The effects and influence of (group) identity on the lives of people is thus anything but harmless or innocent. Identity serves as an effective and compelling guideline to many. It ‘shapes action, shapes life plans’ (Appiah 1996:80) and it carries notions (‘lifescripts’, Appiah 1996:98) of how people should behave. This thought will be further investigated in the next section. We will focus (again) on race and examine its role in the formation of identity: in which ways is race a component of both the individual psyche and of relationships among individuals, and how does it inspire group affiliation as well as discrimination?

2.2 The Persistent Effects of Colour Labelling: Racial Identity

-- 'I really don't think of you as Black.' The erasure of my Blackness is meant to be a compliment, but I am not flattered. For when I am e-raced, I am denied an identity that is meaningful to me and am separated from people who are my flesh and blood. (Harlon L. Dalton, 1995)

In Chapter 1, it was argued and confirmed that races are social constructions, human inventions without any observable (biological) essence in nature. Race is an empty category, predominantly based on false conceptions and superficial differences like skin colour. As a concept, race was invoked to justify subordination and oppression of various groups: it introduced a new (discriminative) social hierarchy. Despite these negative connotations and its acknowledged arbitrariness, race remains nevertheless fundamental to contemporary American society. It is a crucial component of individual identities and a driving force behind group attachment. Without a racial designation some people tend to feel incomplete, deprived from an essential part of who they are. In this section, we will explore what it is that makes race so essentially connected to identity. We will investigate how racial identities come about and look at different theories of racial identity development. Dangers and difficulties concerning racial identification will be considered, while the possibility of racial passing will be assessed.

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It has been stated earlier that identities are rather complex notions. Apart from being plural in character and created dialogically, they are also flexible and fragmentary. Some parts of our identity are negotiable: who we are can change ‘from moment to moment, dependent upon where we are in shifting settings’ (Laird qtd. in Miehls 235). Other features are more or less fixed though. Predetermined by history or biology, these particular aspects of identity leave people with little other choice but to accept them. Race belongs to this latter category as it is both fixed and ascribed. On the basis of visible, superficial and subjectively selected physical peculiarities, people are appointed to different racial groups. Names and labels are presented and allocated. Where one can always try to neglect or reject one’s racial identity, this is usually seen as a deliberate act of deceit and it will turn out to be almost impossible, since race is, along with gender, one of the very first things observed when meeting people (Omi and Winant 62). In Appiah’s words: ‘Racial identification is hard to resist in part because racial ascription by others is so insistent; and its effects – especially, but by no means exclusively, the racist ones – are so hard to escape’ (1996:82). Racial classification happens mainly through ‘interpellation’, a process first recognised by Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser. Very basically, ‘interpellation’ can be interpreted as ‘calling’ (McLeod 37). The idea is that a dominant ideology addresses the individual who voluntarily acknowledges the authority or relevance of it and subjects themselves to it. McLeod clarifies the concept by bringing up the example of the Martinique-born French author and psychologist Frantz Fanon. In Black Skin, White Masks, in which he evaluates the effects of racism and colonisation, Fanon recalls how he was called a ‘dirty nigger’ when he was in France and how this ‘being represented by others’ had a ‘damaging effect on his sense of identity’ (McLeod 37-38):

Fanon is called by others, and this makes him suddenly consider himself in terms of the racist ideology which informs how others see him. Ideology assigns him a role and identity which he is made to recognise as his own (McLeod 37- 38)

Racial identities are thus in the first place imposed upon people, who more or less have to accept this racial labelling. This may be a very painful experience and invoke feelings of anger and hate. Only after a while may individuals adjust and personalise their

23 ascribed identity to fit their own needs and wishes and give it an appropriate place within their own personal identity and image of self. From that moment on, racial identity can become a source of pride (see further: the Cross Model). Racial ascription carries a lot of expectation for it involves and reveals a whole range of beliefs, preconceived notions and stereotypes of what each specific racial group is supposed to look like. It is a concept ‘that renders [people] vulnerable to denigration and fails to acknowledge the heterogeneity of the group’ (Sanders Thompson 2001:163). Appiah argues that

[W]e expect people of a certain race to behave a certain way not simply because they are conforming to the script for that identity, performing that role, but because they have certain antecedent properties that are consequences of the label’s properly applying to them. (1996:79)

In his introduction to Appiah’s essay, David B. Wilkins elucidates that Appiah in fact warns us that if we make race too central to our identity, we run the risk of ‘replacing the tyranny of racism with the tyranny of racial expectations’ (7). It is a reasonable fear: ‘A man was expected to behave like a man. I was expected to behave like a black man’, Frantz Fanon testifies in Black Skin, White Masks (114). The earliest attempts in the United States to identify people along racial lines go back to colonial times, when race had to justify the enslavement of coloured people. It was ruled that only black people (‘negroes’, as they were called at the time, Zack 1998:76) could be owned as slaves. But who is black? Are there any objective criteria? What to do with the many (colour) differences among African people and the children born from black slave women and free white men? The one-drop rule was introduced to remove all doubt and ambiguity. As people wanted to create as many slaves as possible, the rule prescribed that someone is racially black as soon as they have one black ancestor in their line of descent. In other words, one drop of ‘black blood’ (however small or invisible it may be and regardless the number of white kin they have) was enough to make a person black. This notorious – for primarily racist – rule, which is today also known by the name ‘hypo-descent rule’, ‘emerged from the American South to become the nation’s definition’ (Davis §1). It imparted a false and artificial

24 transparency to the idea of race but was nevertheless accepted and taken for granted by both whites and blacks, freedom fighters, judges and courts. The one-drop rule is quite a unique phenomenon for it is only applied in the United States and only with regard to people of African descent (Davis §5). Over the years, it has had an enormous impact on identity politics and people’s self-esteem. The rule was originally deployed by whites as a means of exclusion, to invoke shame, yet was soon altered by blacks as a marker of pride and inclusion (see further). The principle is still very influential in US society today. Even though it has come under growing criticism, with its basic assumptions largely discredited, the rule itself has ‘never been successfully challenged as a basis for racial classification’ (Zack 1998:77). People of mixed race origin, for example, are still usually considered to identify with the black community. Various theories of racial identity development have recently shed new light on how people accept and deal with (ascribed) racial identities. These theories seek to explain the different stages people go through before they feel comfortable with their racial identity, before they ‘achieve racial self-actualization’ (Miehls 235). In the past, racial identification was seen as a single concept, an ‘all-or-none phenomenon’ (Sanders Thompson 1992:75). People were thought to identify fully and promptly with all aspects of their racial identity, while any variation in group identity orientation was systematically denied or ignored. R.L. Williams was one of the first scholars to suggest that this approach might be inadequate. He criticised the old view and instead he favoured a ‘multifaceted conceptualization of racial identification’ (Sanders Thompson 2001:157). According to this multidimensional perspective, racial identification was no longer believed ‘to proceed evenly’, but was ‘viewed as a developmental progression’ (Sanders Thompson 1992:76). William Cross and Janet Helms are two leading theorists in the domain of racial identity development. Both scholars have introduced parallel theories and systems which challenged the former ‘all-or-none’ formulation and approached racial identification instead as a systematic process comprising several stages. This process was one of ‘exploration and discovery’ and was felt to be necessary for the individual in order to acquire a strong (and positive) racial identity (Sanders Thompson 2001:157).

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Cross is especially known and rewarded for his Nigrescence model, established in 1971 and carefully revised in 1991. In his theory, which is celebrated as ‘one of the seminal Black racial identity theories’, Cross describes ‘different ideologies of Black identity that African American people may have’ (Vandiver et al. 71). He hypothesises that individuals pass through a sequence of stages, usually moving from an anti- or ‘non-Afrocentric identity’ and attitude (Cross 97) towards ‘one in which they are ultimately secure with their own Blackness and can appreciate other racial and ethnic heritages’ (Wilson & Constantine 356). Cross recognises and describes four subsequent stages in this process. The first, pre-encounter, stage is characterised by strong pro- white and obvious anti-black feelings. At this stage, people tend to deny that race plays a decisive role in their lives: ‘race does not matter’ (Miehls 236). In the encounter stage, however, the experience of a racially based (series of) event(s) motivates individuals to revise and reinterpret their view of blackness and to ‘acknowledge that he/she is part of a targeted group’ (Miehls 236). The immersion-emersion phase then marks an absolute change in attitude. Black people ‘demolish the “old” perspective’ and embrace their own history and culture which become their ‘new frame of reference’ (Cross 106). We note deep ‘Black Involvement’ and strong ‘Anti-White’ sentiments (Vandiver et al. 72). Finally, in the internalization stage, people internalise their new identity and they attain inner security and comfort with their Blackness. Due to this confidence, they can now ‘focus on things other than oneself and one’s racial group’ (Wilson & Constantine 356). However, Cross notes that

Internalization is not likely to signal the end of a person’s concern with Nigrescence, for as one progresses across the life span, new challenges (i.e., new encounters) may bring about the need to re-cycle through some of the stages (Encounter through Internatlization). (113)

Based on Cross’ Nigrescence model of 1971, Janet Helms together with Thomas Parham designed a ‘Black Racial Identity Attitude Scale’ (RIAS-B). This scale served to further explain the black racial identity stages proposed in Cross’ theory (Wilson & Constantine 356). The RIAS-B is employed to measure attitudes towards racial identity and has been extremely popular in studies concerning black racial identity. The scale is used, among other things, to ‘examine the relationship between the black racial identity

26 constructs and numerous variables, including academic achievement’ (Vandiver et al. 71). In addition Helms has carried out extensive research on racial identity development of blacks as well as whites. Like Cross, she has presented her findings in an elaborate theory and model, developed in 1984 but adapted and reformulated later (for a full discussion see Helms 181-198). These theories and attitude scales, presented by Cross, Helms and other scholars, explain how racial identity may be the source of group solidarity, how ‘the label shapes the intentional acts of (some of) those who fall under it’ (Appiah 1996:80). They also make clear that not all members of a racial group necessarily identify equally with all aspects. There is ‘a set of theoretically committed criteria for ascription’, yet these need not be held by everybody (Appiah 1996:80). People respond differently to particular impulses and encounters. Identification depends on personal experience and beliefs, on people’s individual response to external forces and to cultural, social and historical factors. If racial identification is to remain viable for its members, this variability must be generally understood and agreed to (Sanders Thompson 2001:164). It should also be taken into account that group (and in particular, racial) boundaries today are not as static anymore as they used to be. Social and geographic mobility have enabled people from different ethnic, religious and racial backgrounds to socialise and intermingle. The globe is shrinking and in many cases differences between various groups seem to have become less significant and obvious. Apart from an increase in the number of interracial marriages, these blurring boundaries may result in people crossing the colour line, people passing for other races. This process of passing may either occur consciously and of one’s own accord or accidentally and thus involuntarily (Sollors 1997:250). When in the latter situation, someone is forced or mistaken to have either a white or black identity, though this is in actuality the other way round, the reasons and motives are manifold in the former situation. Deliberate passing can be inspired by political reasons (e.g. escape from slavery, discrimination, segregation), opportunism (e.g. the prospect of economic advancement), love, curiosity, etc. (Sollors 1997:250-251). In theory, passing can occur in all possible directions: from black to white, white to black, Jews pretending to be Gentiles, Anglo-Indians to be British, etc… The term is nevertheless ‘most frequently used as if it were short for “passing for white” ’ (Sollors

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1997:247). It concerns the white negro, ‘a light-skinned black’ who tries to assimilate into the white society ‘to live as white for a significant time’ (Harper 381). It is argued that racial passing is possible because of ‘the specifically visual means by which racial identity is registered in U.S. culture’ (Harper 381-382, italics in original). People who are morphologically atypical for their race (those who have ‘a misleading appearance’ Harper 382), can sometimes claim a racial identity other than the one they would be (legally) ascribed to. The fact that racial passing happens, does not mean, however, that it is socially accepted. Racial passing is seen as ‘dishonest’, ‘a form of deception’ (Sollors 1997:249). Consequently, it is an extremely rare phenomenon. People prefer to keep racial boundaries intact. They expect them to display some resistance to alteration. When focussing on people from a mixed racial descent, the subject of passing can provide revealing insights. Theoretically, people with a mixed origin can either pass for white or black (having ancestors in both categories, being connected with both cultures and traditions), yet social custom expects them to identify with a single race and firmly demands them ‘to try to “be” black’ (Zack qtd. in Sollors 1997:249). They are thus ruthlessly restricted in their choices and possibilities. In the next section, racial mixing will be our central topic. We will investigate and evaluate the phenomenon and consider its effects on contemporary notions of identity.

2.3 Neither Black nor White yet Both: Crossing Racial Boundaries

I am white and I am black, and know that there is no difference. Each one casts a shadow, and all shadows are dark. (Walter White, Why I Remain a Negro)

Geographical borders which run between and split up different countries are considered to be ‘important thresholds, full of contradiction and ambivalence. They both separate and join different places. They are intermediate locations where one contemplates moving beyond a barrier’ (McLeod 217). The same can be said with regard to race, for borders and boundaries in this sociological domain are at least as important, as vague and as ambiguous. In this last section of our theoretical framework, we will look at the phenomenon of border crossing, or, to put it more negatively,

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‘boundary violation’. Multiracial people and the unique perception of their identities will be at stake. We will seek to address the consequences and effects of living on the edge of two ‘formally’ distinct races while concentrating on the situation of mixed race people today as well as in the past. How should people of mixed racial origin be classified and what are the consequences for their personal sense of self? The focus throughout will be on individuals of black and white parentage, as they are the protagonists in Richard Powers’ The Time of Our Singing. In chapter 1, it has been argued that in the past, races were universally approached as biological realities, rigid categories which were clearly marked and separated. The boundaries between and among them were understood as fixed and static, unable to cross or break. Physical differences and peculiarities like skin colour were held as primary boundary markers. Everyone knew exactly to which category one belonged: there was ‘a massive consensus, both among those labeled black and among those labeled white, as to who, in their own communities, fell under which labels’ (Appiah 1996:76). In this clear-cut racial classification system, there was no room for racial mixing. Public opinion on the subject was fiercely critical. Mixing was regarded as the ultimate form of betrayal as people spoke about the ‘greater menace of the half- different and the partially familiar’ (Gilroy 106, emphasis mine). Why was the perception of racial mixing so overwhelmingly negative? People have always been wary of racial mixing, especially because it contradicts and undermines the conventional understanding of races as clearly separated, mutually exclusive groups (Parker and Song 3). Mixing contaminates, in other words, the impression of racial purity, one of the basic assumptions and premises upon which the (biological) concept of race had been established and constructed. Racially mixed people deviate from a norm. They are different in a unique way, for their difference cannot be located ‘in the common-sense lexicon of alterity’ (Gilroy 105-106). Mixed people fall in between discrete groups and balance on the fuzzy border of two (or more) recognised racial categories. It is this particular characteristic which worries people most: they do not know how to deal with the unexpected and ‘unsettling traces of hybridity’ (Gilroy 106). Consequently, they regard mixed people as ‘threatening forms of perversion and degeneration’ (Young 5), as somehow less than complete human beings, as dishonest creatures. Instances of bigotry, prejudice and intolerant behaviour

29 are hence no exception: ‘Oppression chokes multiracial people from all sides’ (Root 5), even in governmental policy and official documents. From the early seventeenth century onwards, legislation was introduced that prohibited interracial marriage and cohabitation (Sollors 1997:395-410). These anti- miscegenation laws had to put a final stop to interracial contact (especially between blacks and whites) as the aim was ‘to maintain not only white privilege, but also white racial and cultural purity’ (Daniel 126). To a certain extent the laws served their purpose. They increased fear, negative judgment and isolation and caused outbreaks of racism while ‘making the black-white divide the deepest and historically most pervasive of all American color lines’ (Sollors 2000:3-4). They could, however, not entirely prevent people from crossing the colour-line nor could they stop illegal liaisons from happening. Consequently, when all anti-miscegenation laws were finally repealed in 1967 (Sollors 1997:409), there was already a small yet significant part of the American population to which the conventional racial labels were no longer applicable, so-called multiracial people (sometimes negatively referred to as ‘mulattos’, ‘hybrids’, ‘quadroons’ or ‘octoroons’, Sollors 1997:125) who fell outside the traditional racial framework. This group of racially mixed Americans was steadily growing, thanks to a multiracial baby boom that started in the early 1970s, immediately after the ban on interracial marriages had been nationally removed (Root xv). However, despite these demographic and political changes, the official system to measure racial categorisation, presented and employed in administrative reporting and federal statistics like the census, was not revised. In the American census surveys, which are highly influential in determining not only government policy but also public opinion on race, people were obliged to choose between a number of racial categories and tick the one box that best applied to them (Root 5). Mixed racial identification was not embraced or recognised. Instead, the one- drop or hypo-descent rule assigned people with black and white ancestors uniformly and automatically to the black camp. Mixed race people were thus not allowed to identify with the racial group of their choice, let alone with more than one race. This discriminative ‘one-option’ system came increasingly under attack in the last decades of the twentieth century, when multiracial people, apart from growing in number, ‘began to assert their right to choose their own identities’ (Vermeulen 88). Two important and

30 concrete adjustments were demanded: the introduction of a multiracial category and the option ‘to check more than one race’ (Vermeulen 90). Whereas the Multiracial Movement strongly favoured both ideas, many civil right advocates opposed the formation of a multiracial category as they were concerned it would negatively affect the remaining number of people in the other racial categories (Hirschman et al. 2000:382). Light-skinned blacks, for example, were likely to opt for the multiracial group which would then reduce the final number of blacks (Vermeulen 15). These and other objections, eventually prevented a multiracial category from being established. The need for change, however, could no longer be denied and in the 2000 U.S. census, an important concession was made: for the very first time in American history were people allowed to identify themselves as belonging to more than one race (Harris & Sim 614). The names of the racial categories were furthermore adapted and a new division and ordering was suggested (U.S. Census Bureau, online). This shift in racial measurement was warmly welcomed. It signified ‘a major step in redefining race as a social, not a biological, category’ (Hirschman et al. 2000:390) and emphasised the variability and fluidity of racial identification. It also provided a more accurate and complex portrait of racial diversity in America: it redrew ‘the map of ethnic boundaries’ and contributed to ‘the emergence of a new vocabulary which goes well beyond the “black/white” binary’ (Parker and Song 2). What are the effects of this change on people’s self-perception in daily life? Do people of mixed racial descent identify as black, white or as something entirely different, something in-between? Is there a clear break with the practice of self-identification in earlier times? It is claimed that mixed race people have a unique experience and face exceptional patterns of identity formation (Parker and Song 7). As they fall outside dominant categories, they must develop specific, constructive strategies for exploring and affirming who they are. Theoretically, mixed race people have five identity options between which they can choose at all times: they can opt for black, white, both, neither or something in-between. In actuality, however, there is not so much flexibility. In the past, when the hypo-descent rule was still widely employed and when mixed racial identification was not yet officially recognised, personal choice was harshly restricted and greatly influenced by prevailing public opinion. The majority of mixed race people identified themselves voluntarily (at least to some extent) with the black community

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(Daniel 129). Today, traces of this dominant racial ideology are still noticeable. Research shows that adolescents of mixed descent still tend to choose black when they are asked to name the one category which best describes their racial background (Harris & Sim 621). This phenomenon can (again) be explained with reference to the lasting power of the one-drop rule: many of the respondents ‘are socialised to understand that even if they identify as multiracial, they are “really” black’ (Harris & Sim 621). It has been argued earlier that the one-drop rule still determines how people think about race and racial identification, even today. More and more multiracial people, however, do embrace both racial heritages. The results of the 2000 U.S. Census seem to confirm this evolution. Even though there is, due to a constant shift in the naming and organisation of racial categories in official documents, no precise statistical basis for historical comparison, we can observe that 6.8 million people, which is 2.4 percent of the American population, have selected more than one race (U.S. Census Bureau, online). These people who identify as multiracial seek to integrate ‘the plurality of their black and white backgrounds’ into their identity (Daniel 127). They straddle two worlds and two cultures: they have ‘the ability to hold, merge, and respect multiple perspectives simultaneously’ (Root xxi). This is not always an easy thing to do, for multiracial people may ‘face distrust and suspicion from both sides of their family’ (Parker and Song 7). They are often accused of betrayal when articulating their whiteness too much (Maxwell 209-210, Daniel 129) and the call for the recognition of a mixed race identity is also frequently challenged as being no more than ‘an attempt to escape from being tainted by blackness’ and to seek instead ‘the privileges of whiteness’ (Parker and Song 7). Earlier research assumed that people of a mixed racial descent automatically experience severe problems with their personal identity (Daniel 127). Whereas this it clearly a sweeping generalisation and oversimplification, it is nonetheless true for some individuals (see Maxwell 209-228). Being mixed may cause internal struggles as it raises questions of identification and affiliation. An interesting parallel between diaspora - and multiracial identities can be introduced here, for the two concepts seem to have some important, yet exclusive, features in common. Both are determined by (imaginary) boundaries. They are ‘hybrid identities at the in-between’ (McLeod 216). People living ‘in-between two races’ may struggle with similar questions of identity and

32 belonging as those who live ‘in-between two countries or cultures’. They may experience analogous feelings of rootlessness and displacement and face the same ambiguous loyalties and difficult choices. To give only one example, a common lament heard from biracial individuals is that they feel excluded from both communities since neither of ‘the polarised categories’ seems to accept them as full, official members (Maxwell 209). The same is true for migrants, who occupy ‘a displaced position’ somewhere in-between, unable (and not supposed) to accommodate within the ‘imaginative borders’ of the new nation nor to return to the old, home country (McLeod 211-212). Home is crucial in this respect. It performs an important function in people’s lives. It is ‘a location where we are welcome, where we can be with people very much like ourselves’ (McLeod 210). Both in the case of multiracial people and migrants, home serves as a shelter where they can hide from external, negative opinion and be who they want to be. It is a private world within the larger world surrounding them. In the previous section, we have introduced Cross’ Nigrescence model which recognises four subsequent stages in the development of racial identities. To conclude our theoretical framework, we will briefly discuss a number of differences and similarities between this model and some empirical and theoretical findings of bi- and multi-racial identity development. In 1990, W.S.C. Poston figured that most monoracial identity development models (like the ones established by Cross and Helms) would be inadequate for biracial individuals as they do not consider ‘the possibility of integrating more than one racial/ethnic group identity into one’s sense of self’ (in Kerwin & Ponterotto 205). They disregard, in other words, the likelihood of people showing and having interest in more than one culture or racial group. Kerwin & Ponterotto (210-214) have introduced a biracial identity model in which they combine and integrate findings of various studies and empirical research. In their model they distinguish between six successive stages. In the first, Preschool, phase, they notice that biracial individuals experience a first sense of being different as they recognise dissimilarities between father, mother, siblings and themselves. ‘Denial of racial differences on the part of the parents’, may have a significant effect on the development of racial awareness (211), for in order to develop a positive attitude towards one’s biracial heritage and a positive sense of self, parental interest and concern is considered to be crucial. In the second stage, Entry to School, children are confronted

33 with labels and descriptive terms, which they adopt for themselves. In the Preadolescence phase, there is ‘an increasing recognition of one’s own and other’s group membership being related to factors such as skin color, physical appearance, language, and culture’ (212). Environmental factors, such as racist incidents, ‘trigger increased racial awareness’ (212). The fourth stage of Adolescence is probably the most challenging one for biracial individuals. In their search for a racial identity, they may struggle with acceptance and membership and sometimes they are obliged to choose a specific racial group. In College/Young Adulthood, problems continue to appear though they also start to recognise the advantages of having a biracial heritage. In Adulthood, finally, the biracial individual may reach complete self-acceptance.

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PART 2 Literary Analysis ﺹ

In this second part the theory on race and identity, presented in the first two chapters, will be employed as an analytic tool and applied to Richard Powers’ novel The Time of Our Singing. The aim is to investigate how the author has used both notions to create his fictional story. Our approach will be mainly text-immanent. Narrative strategies and thematic choices will be systematically analysed. Chapter 3 will focus on Powers’ characterisation. The novel will be situated within the tradition of interracial literature and it will be examined whether Powers either confirms or refutes the dominant ideas, paradigms and conventional representation of mixed-race people and their identity. Chapter 4 will highlight the relationship between race, culture and history. Throughout, the abbreviation TOS is used and references are to the Vintage edition (London 2004).

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CHAPTER 3: CHARACTERISATION - A COMPOSITION IN BLACK & WHITE

Richard Powers is an author who is both praised and criticised, often within the context of the same review or article. On the one hand, he is admired for his clever and dazzling plots in which he combines and juxtaposes dense theoretical considerations with more literary reflections and also for the architecture and crafty designs of his novels which are generally as complex and ingenious as the subject matter itself. On the other hand, he is critiqued for his (sometimes) implausible dialogues and for creating characters who are too clever, too abstract and never fully come to life as real persons. His characters are ‘not so much people as topics, subjects, fields of study’, John Homans claims in New York (Magazine) (§2). Daniel Mendelsohn makes a similar complaint in The New York Times (§12) when he states that the author’s interest in characters is limited to ‘their usefulness as symbolic elements in grand theoretical assemblages’. Powers is not concerned with people, Max Watman argues in The New Criterion (§16) but ‘with abstractions’, with ‘the ideas behind them or intrinsic to them’. The observation that Powers is an author of ideas whose novels are primarily cerebral and whose characters are only secondary to a general purpose and a specific scheme holds also true (to some extent at least) for The Time of Our Singing. Having dealt in his earlier work with topics like molecular genetics, artificial intelligence and virtual reality, in The Time of Our Singing Powers tackles the great subjects of race, identity, history and culture and in the tradition of the Great American Novel, he combines and amalgamates them into one convincing, yet complex, narrative. As in his previous novels, the novel has an innovative design: thematic ideas are echoed in its structure. The novel has a fragmented organisation similar to that of a grand classical composition, while various elements and parts of the time theory, elaborated upon in the story, also function as structuring devices (e.g. the idea that time is non-linear and reversible). The story is 631 pages long and ordered non-sequentially around certain themes and recurring passages. It moves back and forth in time, making loops which are signalled by a switch between first-person and third-person narrative voices.

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The Time of Our Singing is thus unquestionably an intellectual novel. Yet, apart from the big ideas and its clever structure, it is, at its core, also an expressive and emotional story about being connected as a family and about trying to find out where one belongs. Though at times the characters may be hardly more than a pair of eyes and ears (only there, so it seems, to register important events, to pronounce impressive opinions and show great insights), Powers expresses nevertheless a deep concern for their inner conflicts, their sense of self, their search for recognition and need for belonging. Overall we believe that the critique on his characterisation as being not fully dimensional is not justified here. The members of the Strom family may be exceptionally gifted, they are authentic as well and manage to address and capture both the readers’ minds and their hearts. In what follows, we will explore Powers’ portrayal of mixed-race people. We will place the novel in, or rather compare it to, the tradition of interracial literature and look whether common themes and representations are reinforced and if any recurring patterns and typical portrayals are exhibited.

3.1 Interracial Literature: A Literary Tradition

-- Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. They are engines of change, windows on the world, lighthouses erected in the sea of time. (Barbara W. Tuchman)

Novels play an important role in capturing as well as influencing social reality and developments. Originating in real historical and social contexts, they cannot but reflect the spirit of their age. They reveal, reinforce and help to consolidate prevailing views and dominant attitudes (though critical writers can of course also decide to stem the current and try to cause change). According to philosopher Alain Locke, there is no record more valuable for the study of the social history of the Negro in America than ‘the naïve reflection of American social attitudes and their changes in the literary treatment of Negro life and character’ (269). Literary representations, in other words, are the best witnesses to social patterns, opinions and changes. They are considered to be more genuine and sensitive than journalistic papers or public debate, as they

37 relatively unconsciously ‘trace the fundamental attitudes of the American mind’ (Locke 269). Novels are thus (and should be read as) important and crucial windows on the world of today as well as of the past. Racial mixing has always been a common and pervasive theme in world literature. From ancient to medieval times and up to the present, texts featuring interracial couples and mixed-race people have been written and widely read (for an overview and chronology of interracial literature see Sollors 1997:361-394). This persistent appearance of mixed-race figures in literature, even if only a minor part is reserved for them, reflects the importance of miscegenation as a social issue and actuality in everyday life. This section will investigate miscegenation as a literary topic in American literature. It will explore some distinctive and recurring themes while discussing in more detail mixed-race characters and their (stereotypical) portrayal. It will show how symbolic representations reflect and affect public opinion on the subject of miscegenation. In American literature, novels dealing with interracial families and their descendants were initially met with fierce social opposition. In his study Neither Black nor White yet Both, Werner Sollors (1997:8) points out that coinciding with the anti- miscegenation laws, some American States even decided to prohibit the distribution of interracial literature as it was strongly believed that such stories would support and promote ‘interracial marriage’ as well as ‘social equality’, two things that had to be avoided by all means. Still, ‘despite legal prohibition, religious denunciation, moral indignation, or social opposition’, stories portraying black and white unions continued to appear and they have remained a ‘prominent feature of American literature’ ever since (Sollors 1997:8). Today, we can even discern a real ‘multiracial trend’ as more and more mixed-race characters populate contemporary novels (Spickard 90). This development illustrates and mirrors the demographic and social changes taking place in present-day America. The purpose and function of interracial stories, their overall quality and nature, their choice of topic and their description of mixed-race individuals have all significantly changed over the years. Whereas today authors dealing with multiracial people try to fully develop their characters and seek to address the influence and legacy of cultural hybridisation and racial mixture on both individuals and contemporary

38 society, in earlier treatments, mixed-race people were seldom more than exaggerated types representing polemical issues. They were used, in other words, as vehicles for propaganda (Bullock 284). In the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when writers actively participated in the ongoing debates on slavery or segregation (Sollors 2000:10), authors were not so much concerned with ‘truthful re-creations of life and living people’, yet utilised their protagonists as mere ‘instruments for a cause’, to convey their views and opinions (Bullock 281-282). Writers at the time were either pro- slavery or abolitionists and their treatment and portrayal of mulatto and negro characters largely depended on this political orientation, on ‘the social and historical background out of which (they) wrote’ (Bullock 281, parenthesis mine). Pro-slavery authors usually introduced the stereotyped figure of ‘the Brute Negro’ (Brown 274). In an attempt to preserve slavery, they portrayed black people as vicious savages, dreadful primitives. It allowed them to praise the practices of slavery as the ultimate and only way to tame and control these so-called ‘inhuman’ negroes. Mixed-race characters were considered to be at least as dangerous as pure blacks. Being a threat to racial integrity and purity, the mulatto was negatively pictured in pro-slavery accounts. He/she was ‘the despoiler of white womanhood, the corrupter of the white gentleman, and the usurper of political power’ (Bullock 282). Anti-slavery authors, on the other hand, established and employed the stereotype of ‘the Tragic Mulatto’, a near- white character who had to gain the sympathy and pity of its white readers. Literary critic Sterling Brown explains that since ‘the audience was readier to sympathize with heroes and heroines nearer to themselves in appearance’, the mulatto was the ultimate spokesman for abolitionist writers (qtd. in Sollors 1997:225). People would be more susceptible to the difficult situation of oppressed races if their problems were addressed by someone who looks, behaves and thinks very much like themselves. It should be noted that the figure of the tragic mulatto was ‘not just a white idiosyncrasy’, but also popular in black novels (Sollors 1997:226). The tragic mulatto is, according to Brown, ‘a lost, woebegone abstraction’, ‘clichéd, unrealistic, non-individualized, and unoriginal’ (in Sollors 1997:223). It is a tormented figure. Caught between two cultures and races, the tragic mulatto (very often a woman) feels miserable and lost, not fully belonging to either of the racial groups. Typically, these near-white mulattos successfully pass for white, yet they live in a

39 constant fear that their black heritage will be discovered and that this will ruin their status and accomplishments (Spickard 81). Often it does, which then leads to an unhappy and tragic ending. The characterisation is rather superficial and based on commonplace formulas: ‘they are quickly and recognizably sketched and given only a few memorable traits’ (Ferguson in Sollors 1997:228). Sterling Brown reveals a racist ideology behind the idea of the tragic mulatto as the image seems to support the common belief that the mulatto’s good characteristics (‘his intellectual strivings, his unwillingness to be a slave’) are to be attributed to the white blood in his veins and that ‘his baser emotional urges, his indolence, his savagery’ come from ‘his Negro blood’ (279). This racist undertone is not present in all texts representing (tragic) mulatto characters though (Sollors 1997:231). Used in numerous novels, plays and poems, the tragic mulatto has become an idée fixe ‘in the mob mind’ (Brown 280). It is an archetypal and stereotyped character in both literature and film. Today, however, as writers try to steer clear from common and stereotypical representations, the figure of the tragic mulatto is ‘but a minor note in the rich symphony of current writings on racial mixedness’ (Spickard 82). Apart from the clichéd racial portrayals, another typical characteristic of interracial literature is its recurring themes and motives. As Werner Sollors elucidates in his book Neither Black nor White yet Both, the issue of racial passing, the possibility of black assimilation in the white community, tragic love stories, the various bans on interracial marriages, miscegenation as a form of incest, etc., these were all very popular subject matters in literature dealing with black and white couples and their descendants. ‘Passing’ in particular has always been a popular theme. The idea that light-skinned blacks could pass for white, that they (either knowingly or unconsciously) could cross racial boundaries which were ‘considered fixed, real, or even natural’ (Sollors 1997:245), caught the imagination of both writers and their readers. Today, as multiracial identification becomes more widespread (cf. chapter 2), we find an emphasis on the inner problems of mixed-race people. Presented as ‘a cultural hybrid, a stranded personality living in the margin of fixed status’ (Bullock 281), mixed-race individuals and their place in present-day society are examined. Where does Richard Powers belong in this long tradition of interracial literature? Are the mixed-race protagonists portrayed in The Time of Our Singing different from

40 the stereotypical mulattos in eighteenth and nineteenth century novels? Or are they flat and caricatured as the tragic mulatto?

3.2 The Portrait of a Family: Fish or Bird?

-- “How come you two together? Don't you know about black and white? ... The bird and the fish can fall in love. But where they gonna build their nest?” (TOS 630)

In The Time of Our Singing, Richard Powers follows a biracial family through much of the twentieth century. With a focus on the troubled decades – the 1930s, 1950s and 60s – he presents and establishes a compelling panorama of America’s race relations and struggles. Powers’ fictional family is made up of David Strom, Delia Daley and their three mixed-race children. David is a German-Jewish physicist who fled the Nazis to become a professor at Columbia University and Delia is a black, classically trained singer from Philadelphia, who will never make it as a professional because of her skin colour. The couple met in 1939 at the historic concert given by the black contralto Marian Anderson on the Mall in Washington DC. Forbidden by tradition and outlawed in the majority of the states, the two fell in love and married. Product of their love are the three musically gifted children Jonah, Joseph and Ruth (listed from old to young and from light to dark). Delia and David decide to raise them beyond race, ‘for when everybody will be past color’ (TOS 425). Home schooled and thus safely shielded from the racist assaults of everyday reality, the three children grow up in a colour-blind world where they are encouraged ‘to run their own race’ (TOS 29), to be themselves before anything else. It is an experiment that is doomed to failure because in post-war segregated America it is impossible to ignore race or to escape naming. It is impossible not to choose sides. Powers’ story concentrates on race and, more specifically, on how the protagonists confront racial hatred and discrimination, how they struggle to establish an identity and secure a place for themselves. Powers examines to what extent people are free to be who they choose to be and to what extent racial identification is negotiable. The story moves back and forth in time as it shifts between the experiences, concerns and emotions of the parents and those of the children. Powers’ characterisation is

41 convincing. He has avoided the easy trap of cliché formulas and portrayals by giving his mixed-race characters a sheltered and colour-blind home situation and by setting them in the high cultural milieu of classical music. Powers did not need to adopt the rhythms of black speech (only in the end, when he is portraying Kwame, Ruth’s firstborn who becomes a rap musician in the band ‘N Dig Nation’) and he could write about a world he knows inside out (cf. Introduction). It has certainly given the characters authority and credibility. They are not, as we will see, caricatured and do not resemble the tragic mulatto figure. Instead they struggle with recognisable problems: questions of cultural ownership, issues of identity and the need for belonging. It is striking and interesting to examine how the Strom children each take a different attitude towards their racial and cultural heritage, their hybrid identity. Jonah (the lightest) obtains a place in the world of European classical music, Ruth (the darkest) rejects her mixed-race heritage and explores her blackness by joining the Black Panthers and Joseph (the one in the middle) takes a position somewhere in between these two extremes, combining elements of both cultures. Their racial identification marks different stages (comparable to those presented in the Cross and Kerwin & Ponterotto Models, cf. chapter 2) and is greatly influenced by outside societal forces, by a process we have earlier called ‘naming’. The way the children view and project themselves conflicts with how other people view and define them. It leads to (mutual) incomprehension, frustration and intolerance (‘What the world sees will always destroy what he rushes to show it’, TOS 421). Jonah Strom, the oldest and the lightest of the three siblings, is by far the most musically talented. He is a true prodigy. His voice is of such perfect purity that ‘it could make heads of state repent’ (TOS 8). Delia and David understand that it would be unforgivable not to develop this talent to the fullest. When the boy is not yet eleven, they feel obliged to send him to a proper school so that he can have a full-time education and training. The search for a suitable school is a difficult undertaking as choice is harshly restricted when you have a Jewish father and a black mother. After being turned down by one of New York’s top conservatories, Jonah eventually wins a full scholarship to study at Boylston Academy, a private boarding school in Boston. It signifies the end of the simple and trouble-free years. Out in the real world and for the

42 first time in the company of people other than his family, Jonah quickly learns what it means to be different. Boylston academy is ‘a last bastion of European culture’, ‘everything about the place was white’ (TOS 50). Being the only coloured boy at school, Jonah is ‘putting the place to the test’ (TOS 68). Though its principal, the Hungarian János Reményi, believes that ‘music – his music – belonged to all races, all times, all places’ (TOS 114), the reality of everyday proves otherwise. Infiltrating into the white world of classical music, Jonah finds that he is not particularly welcome there. Fortunately, he has his voice to compensate. He becomes János’ favourite pupil, the rising star of Boylston. His extraordinary talent protects him against the racial scorn and loathing of the other children as it makes them forget (even if only for the duration of his song) that he is not entirely white:

His sound put him beyond his classmates’ hatred, and they listened, frozen in the presence of this outlandish thing, holding still as this firebird came foraging at their backyard feeder (TOS 53).

The years at Boylston Academy toughen Jonah up, they teach him how ‘to survive the company of others’ (TOS 51). He becomes (seemingly) indifferent, fearless. Despite other children calling him names, Jonah lives life as his parents taught him to do: beyond race. ‘He had found his voice. He needed nothing else’ (TOS 51):

He was the boy with the magic voice, free to climb and sail, changing as light, always imagining that the glow of his gift offered him full diplomatic rights of passage. Race was no place he could recognize, no useful index, no compass point. His people were his family, his caste, himself. Shining, ambiguous Jonah Strom, the first of all the coming world’s would-be nations of one. (TOS 62)

One particular racial incident, however, will leave a crucial mark on him. Jonah falls in love with Kimberly Monera, the daughter of a famous, vigorous opera conductor and composer. She is the palest girl imaginable, almost an albino. Despite their difference in skin colour, the two are very much alike (both are exceptionally talented and outsiders). They make a secret pact that they will get married as soon as Kimberly is old enough not to need her father’s permission. Things turn out differently though.

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When János finds out about their ‘friendship’ (catching them red-handed), he is enraged and warns Monera’s father. It is a disgrace, a transgression. Kimberly is expelled from school, Jonah is humiliated and disillusioned: ‘If we’re wrong, then music is wrong. Art is wrong. Everything you love is wrong’ (TOS 124). Following this incident, Jonah wraps himself in music and is blind to all the rest. He ignores racial history and reality as much as he can and proceeds through life with only one aim: to sing and to be the best at it. Race, however, is too noticeable and too influential to be disregarded. Even though Jonah becomes a successful tenor, one of the greatest singers of his age, winning every contest there is to win, his musical career remains an everlasting battle against racial prejudice and discrimination, against being typecast as a ‘Negro recitalist’ by musical critics. Jonah’s struggle for recognition and against naming exemplifies the disparity between self-identification and external classification, mentioned earlier in chapter 2. There is a clear mismatch between Jonah’s own sense of self and how the world wishes to see him. Jonah strongly feels the need to be nothing but himself: a singer. Society, however, cannot help subdividing, categorising and pigeonholing him as a black musician: ‘I don’t mind being a Negro. I refuse to be a Negro tenor’ (TOS 393). Jonah does not want to become part of either the white or black community. As a loner, he is more or less indifferent to race. He preaches colour blindness and does not feel the need to belong. At times, however, this seems to be no more than a pose, an illusion he makes himself and others believe; for who is enough in being himself? Can one survive without having a history, a people or racial bonds and does society accept this? In the previous chapter, it was argued that certain aspects of one’s identity are non-negotiable, handed down by other people, determined by society, culture or history. Race was said to be one of them. Based on superficial peculiarities, people are assigned to larger groups, races. Boundaries between them are fixed and clearly marked. One cannot escape racial ascription or simply be who one chooses to be. Mixed-race people are, due to the one-drop rule, automatically assigned to the black race (‘It is one thing or another. And they can’t be the one, not in this world’, TOS 425) and they are supposed to behave and live according to the ‘lifescripts’ of this racial group (cf. chapter 2). Racial labelling carries a lot of expectation. Singing opera does not seem to be an option for black people: “It’s not in the culture. Black man wants to be an opera singer? I

44 mean, really” (TOS 393). Culture, race and identity are closely intertwined: “They wouldn’t expect a black person to sing? (…) Not without dancing (TOS 126).

“They let Miss Anderson sing.” “Sure. They let her sing, up at the Big House, on Novelty Night. Do a little dance, too, if she likes. Entertainment! Dogs on bicycles. Just make sure she gets back down to the darkie quarters when the act is over.” (TOS 420)

Jonah seeks to escape this racial ascription and classification (he wants to be ‘something other than hue-man’, TOS 427) and wants to break down the stereotyping. This results in his being accused by both whites and blacks. White people condemn him for breaking down the racial barriers. They refuse to look beyond his skin colour and wonder what a mixed-race man is doing on a (white) classical music stage. Black people blame him for playing ‘the white culture game’ (TOS 381) and for not fighting the right cause (‘how can you play that jewelried shit while your own people can’t even get a job’, TOS 373). They also accuse him of trying to pass for white (‘only white men have the luxury of ignoring race’, TOS 304). Jonah, however, has no such aim whatsoever. He is a self-confident man who has little problem with having a mixed- race heritage (mockingly, he calls himself and his brother ‘mules’, ‘half-breeds’, etc.), he simply wishes that race would not play such an important role in his life (‘I don’t want to be any race’, TOS 393). All Jonah is looking for is artistic transcendence: to be entirely free in music. As he realises that everything he will ever achieve, will always be judged on the basis of his skin colour, Jonah decides to leave America for Europe:

“This country’s totally fucked up. Why would anyone want to live here if he didn’t have to? What choices do I have? I can stick around and tote bales, and if I stay out of trouble long enough, they’ll let me be a certified black artist. Or I can go to Europe and sing.” (TOS 405)

In Ghent, he founds ‘Voces Antiquae’, an a cappella group. He renounces his nineteenth and twentieth century repertoire to sing his way ‘back to a world before domination’ (TOS 514):

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Our parents had tried to raise us beyond race. Jonah decided to sing his way back before it, into that moment before conquest, before the slave trade, before genocide. This is what happens when a boy learns history only from music schools. (TOS 530)

With his a cappella group, Jonah achieves his ultimate goal: he manages to produce ‘a sound that stood for nothing other than what it was’ (600). Jonah and his ‘Voces Antiquae’ conquer both Europe and the United States. In the end, in the riots following the verdict of the Rodney King trial, Jonah becomes the victim of the very issue which he has always tried to avoid and ignore: race. Joseph, who narrates a great deal of the story, is the second of the Strom children. He is one year younger than Jonah but nearly as talented. The boys, collectively referred to as JoJo, will spend most of their lives together. Joseph devotes his talents to his brother’s career, functioning as his faithful accompanist. Living in the shadow of Jonah’s success, Joseph (or Joey, as he is frequently called) seems to be no more than a puppet. He does not mind though and finds joy in accompanying his brother on the piano. It is all he wants in life (‘All I wanted was to be used’ TOS 436). When Jonah goes to Europe, Joseph has to reinvent himself. Having lived for years in self-perfecting isolation – taking care of and following Jonah all over the country – he has to establish a life for himself now. After wandering around for months, not sure what to do, he tries to go back to work, to music. He looks for singers whom he can accompany, always in vain however. Joseph realises that when playing ‘for those who made music without the danger of having it taken away, the song never lifted off the page’ (TOS 430). Finally, he accepts a job as a barroom pianist in the Glimmer Room, a bar in Atlantic City. The kind of music he is supposed to play is completely different from what he was used to performing (‘play what the kids are listening to’, ‘what the kids want to hear’, TOS 433) and the audience he is playing for cannot be compared to his previous listeners (‘what most people wanted from music was not transcendence but simple companionship, a tune just as bound by gravity as its listeners were, cheerful under its crushing leadenness’, TOS 432). During his months in Atlantic City, Joseph falls in love with a white girl, Teresa Wierzbicki. Their relationship has to be kept secret:

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This town was not New York, and walking on the beach was asking for trouble. In season, I’d have been lynched, Teresa would have been thrown back on solo beachcombing, and Mr. Silber would have to close up shop. (…) This was what my parents had lived with every day of their lives. Nothing in me could have loved strongly enough to survive it. (TOS 440)

When Teresa wants to marry him, all Joseph can think of are his parents: ‘All my family’s lessons had reduced to one: No one marries outside their race and lives’ (TOS 503). Whereas Teresa is ready to give up everything for him (her father has broken all family ties because of her relationship with Joseph), Joseph is not willing to make such a commitment. Their relationship fizzles out and eventually Joseph flies to Europe to join his brother in his a cappella group. As he is following the same route as his brother for the most part, Joseph encounters similar problems of identity and belonging. He does not know where he fits in: ‘[W]e belonged to different races. I didn’t know what race I belonged to. Only that it wasn’t Ter’s’ (TOS 496). He is confronted with the same questions of cultural ownership. Like Jonah, he is highly aware of their ambiguous status in a society and culture determined to categorise and divide. Being the narrator and focaliser of the story, the eyes through which we watch, he registers what is happening around him, but does not talk so much about what is going on inside of him. He puts himself second which makes him a hard character to define. One obvious characteristic though, is that he is a man who tries to avoid conflict, more inclined to hold his tongue than to express his opinion. Always in-between two extremes, he is ‘the peacemaker, the crossover, the conciliator’ (TOS 296). He is a helper, ‘even before he can talk, he does everything anyone asks him’ (TOS 335). Some of the other characters in the book think of him as a naïve fool. When Joseph is forty, he leaves Jonah in Europe and returns to America. He transfers allegiance to his sister Ruth and starts to work as a music teacher in New Day, Ruth’s award-winning school. His job feels useful: ‘for the first time in my life, I did work that wouldn’t have been done if I wasn’t doing it’ (TOS 588). Having moved to Oakland and living in a black neighbourhood, he devotes his loyalty and commitment to the interests of the black minority group. Joseph feels ultimately at ease with his black

47 heritage. When Jonah comes to visit him, he exclaims: ‘Unbelievable, Joey. You’re passing. You’re really passing (…) You’ve become the black Joseph Strom’ (TOS 600). Ruth, the youngest and the darkest of the three, lives a completely different life from her brothers. From a very young age, she struggles with her racial identity. Very aware of history and reality, she refuses to ignore the problems occurring around her. She accuses her brothers (and especially Jonah) of betrayal, blames them for articulating their whiteness too much, for living in a white dream. A decisive moment is the tragic death of Delia Daley. She dies in suspicious circumstances when the house explodes in a fire. Is it an accident (as they all want to believe) or a deliberate act of racial hatred? Traces of accelerants seem to refer to an arson attack, still, the case is never fully investigated and remains a mystery. One thing is sure though: Delia’s death means the end of the Strom family as a solid unit. It makes Ruth a defiant, rebellious child who grows estranged from her family as she holds her father responsible for the death of their mother (he should never have married a black woman). She drops out of school, abandons art for politics, marries a racial activist and joins the Black Panthers. She breaks with her father and brothers and rejects her white heritage. She devotes all her time and energy to the Black Power movement. The only one who occasionally hears news from her is Joseph. Ruth even tries to win him over:

“We need you, Joey. You’re smart, competent, educated. People are dying, in Chicago, down in Mississippi. My God, over in Bed-Stuy. People dying by miles, because they refuse to die by inches anymore.” (TOS 373)

When her husband is eventually shot by the police, Ruth and her two little children reunite and find support with Delia’s family (whom she had never known due to a heated discussion and insurmountable argument between David and Delia’s father, a fight about who suffered most and about their decision to raise the children beyond race). Ruth continues to fight for the good cause: she founds a school in Oakland, becomes an educator and community organiser.

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3.3 Racial Identity: The Theoretical Models applied

-- “Mama, you are a Negro, right? And Da’s … some kind of Jewish guy. What exactly does that make me, Joey, and Root?” (TOS 29)

It is clear, from the introduction above, that Powers’ characters have come a long way from the stereotypical tragic mulattos of earlier interracial literature. The fact that the three Strom children are so intrinsically different from one another, that they are responding in various ways to their racial heritage, proves that they are non-stereotyped but believable people of flesh and blood. This section will investigate the way in which Powers’ characters confirm (or echo) the dominant ideas, sociological conceptions and interpretations of mixed-race people and their identities. In the previous chapter, we have elaborated upon the identity models introduced by the theorists and sociologists William Cross, Janet Helms and Kerwin & Ponterotto. We have briefly introduced the various stages they have identified in the process of racial identification. It concerns successive phases that (many) people go through before they are fully comfortable with their racial identity and with who they are. Cross’ Nigrescence model mainly focuses on black adolescents and adults (Cross 98), the model by Kerwin & Ponterotto concentrates on the socialisation process of biracial individuals from early childhood through adolescence and up to adulthood (Kerwin & Ponterotto 210-214). Both models argue that the personal identity one develops at home, before socialisation, is very important as it lays foundations for later (group) identification. They also recognise that a series of events (racist attacks and remarks) may trigger racial awareness and severely disturb one’s sense of self. (Bi)racial individuals may feel the need to reinterpret their identity, redirect their attachments and connections. At various moments in their lives, individuals can switch loyalties and prefer one racial category to the other. Powers’ protagonists experience an evolution and development similar to the ones proposed in these models. It is argued in The Time of Our Singing that, mathematically, biracial individuals have four choices between which they can choose: A not B – B not A – A and B – neither A nor B yet C or D or … (note that this is already one choice more than the three options proposed by Naomi Zack, cf. chapter 2). David and Delia, however, invent a (rather dubious) fifth choice: no race at all. They firmly and naïvely believe in a future

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‘beyond race’ and hope that their children will be the precursors of this new race-free generation. They raise their children in an illusionary colour-blind paradise where race is not an issue. They avoid the topic, avoid naming, even avoid the word itself. They want to give their children the choice: ‘“We don’t name them. They’ll do that for themselves.” Anything they want’ (TOS 425). The downside of this colour-blind experiment is that the children are deprived of an important part of their history. They miss commitment and group affiliation: “You should have taught us, Da. At least about our relatives” (TOS 463). Kerwin & Ponterotto acknowledge that racial consciousness and familiarity with cultural beliefs and values is crucial in order to develop a positive self-esteem and identity (211-212). Delia’s mother realises this too and asks her daughter: “What are you going to give them, for everything you take away?” (TOS 487). Her father wonders: “Where are they going to learn who they are?” (TOS 419). Both believe it is a disgrace and a terrible mistake to raise the children in a colour-blind dream. As predicted in the model of Kerwin & Ponterotto, the mixed-race protagonists become aware of the physical dissimilarities between their parents and themselves at a very early age:

One night after prayers [Jonah] asked our mother, “Where do we come from?” He couldn’t have been ten yet, and was troubled by Ruth, scared by how different she looked from the two of us. Even I already worried him. Maybe the nurses at the maternity hospital had been as careless as Santa. He’d reached the age when the tonal gap Mama and Da grew too wide for him to call it chance. (TOS 17)

The children wonder where they belong, to which category. Delia and David never give them convincing answers. They deny racial differences. This leads to considerable problems and internal struggles as it raises questions of identity. The children feel excluded from both races. They do not know who they are and where they fit in:

“You’re whatever you are, inside. Whatever you need to be. Let every boy serve God in his own fashion.” She wasn’t telling us everything. Jonah heard it, too.

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But what are we? For real, I mean. We got to be something, right?” (…) “You two boys are one of a kind.” (TOS 29)

“What am I?” “You’re my girl,” he told her. “No, Da. What am I?” “You are smart and good at whatever you do.” “No. I mean, if you’re white and Mama is black…” (…) “You are lucky. You are both.” (TOS 273)

When the Strom children enter school, they have no clearly defined notion about different social groups. They are not enough armed against the cruelties of every day, as they have no strong basis that they can fall back upon. When Ruth is called a nigger by a boy in the park, she has no idea what this means. Delia’s explanation is that the boy is ‘all confused’, that ‘nobody’s a nigger’ (TOS 273). In saying and doing so, she strips the girl of all possible defences. Many allusions are made in the novel to the fact that the three children fall in between recognised categories, that they are completely on their own: they are ‘paper white against one crowd, lamp black against the other’ (TOS 413), Ruth and ‘her nonexistent kind’ (TOS 298), Jonah as a ‘would-be nation of one’ (TOS 62). The children are constantly named, categorised, subdivided. This ‘tendency to classify others according to social categories’ is a universal one: people have always used labels and descriptive terms to divide and subdivide (Kerwin & Ponterotto 211). In the novel, Jonah, Joseph and Ruth are called negro, nigger, monkey, half-breed. They are also profoundly and hurtfully misrecognised by others:

“I just can’t tell you how much it means to me, personally, to have a little Negro boy singing like that. In our church. For us.” (…) Jonah smiled at the ladies, forgiving their ignorance. “Oh, ma’am, we’re not real Negroes. But our mother is!” (TOS 28)

“Nobody at school knows what to make of me (…) They ask me if I’m adopted. If I’m Persian, Pakistani, Indonesian.” (TOS 298)

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“What exactly are you boys?” (TOS 6), “Are the two of you Moors?” (TOS 59)

While Jonah does not seem to mind so much and Joseph tries to pay no attention to it either, Ruth is thoroughly troubled by her mixed-race background. She believes that by ignoring race and by playing and singing classical music, the family betrays its black heritage and pretends to be white. After her mother’s death, Ruth decides she is black rather than mixed. She breaks with her father and with everything he stands for (classical music in the first place). She rejects her white bonds and develops strong anti- white feelings. It is not unusual for a mixed-race individual to identify exclusively with the black race for, as argued before, it is only a recent phenomenon for biracial people to embrace racial and cultural heritages of both. The protagonists in The Time of Our Singing were born too early. Living through the civil rights era and thanks to a daily confrontation with the one-drop rule, Ruth in particular feels that she has to choose one racial group. It is relevant to compare the complex process she goes through in developing her racial identity with the different stages introduced in the Cross model (the model established by Kerwin & Ponterotto is less applicable since Ruth at no point identifies as mixed or multiracial). Contrary to her brothers, Ruth is not schooled at home by her parents but sent to a mixed school. This will make a significant difference. Although she grows up in the same colour-blind environment without much racial awareness and completely at ease with and in her family (cf. race does not matter in the pre-encounter stage), at school she starts to question her identity and background. She makes friends of all shades and ‘through these friends she learned all those melodies her parents had failed to teach her’ (TOS 273). She is exposed to facts and data about the black experience, its culture, politics and history. This new information, these ‘other tunes’ (TOS 272) previously unknown to her, challenge her earlier conception of self. She is, at first, confused and alarmed and is not sure what to do with this new worldview and frame of reference. Later, as the Cross model foresees, she becomes ‘enraged at the thought of having been previously miseducated’ by her family (Cross 105). This phase in Ruth’s life is comparable to the Encounter stage. A crucial moment is when her mother dies in a fire and Ruth is the first to find the house in ashes and the first to learn about her death. This incident stimulates her

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(identity) metamorphosis. Supported by her friends at school, she further explores her blackness. She starts, among other things, to wear her hair as African people do. Joseph notices the many differences:

She’s lived through a riot, changed her major [to prelaw], taken to dressing exclusively in tight, dark clothes. She’s exploding with ideas she’s picked up at school. She’s reading books by famous social theorists I’ve never even heard of. She’s passed me by in every way but musically. (TOS 291)

Slowly but surely, Ruth estranges from what rests of her family and she enters what Cross calls the Immersion-Emersion phase. She becomes actively involved in politics, attends meetings and joins black organisations. In Ruth’s case, this political involvement goes rather far as she joins the Black Panther Party. Together with her husband, she becomes a militant who fights for equal social rights. In their eyes, all white people are evil wrongdoers. Joseph is puzzled and worried by Ruth’s determination to hate everything that is white:

“Ruth. What’s happened? What’s gotten into you?” “Nothing’s got into me, brother. Everything was in me already. From birth.” She put her arm out on the table for me to examine. Physical proof. (TOS 375)

Together with her husband, Ruth investigates the death of her mother. They are convinced it was a racist attack, as Ruth believes her mother was killed because she had married a white man. In other words, her father is the one to blame. Ruth has chosen sides. When she presents the evidence to Joseph, she adds: ‘It might help you decide whose son you are’ (TOS 378). Ruth refuses to see that her father is as much a victim of the assault as her mother, that the attacker might as well have been black. Due to continuing negative encounters with white supremacists (her husband dies of complications after he is shot in the knee by a police officer), Ruth seems to get stuck in the third stage of Cross’ Nigrescence model. This may happen when people ‘experience particularly painful perceptions and confrontations’ which make that they are ‘overwhelmed with hate for White people’ (Cross 112). For years, Ruth is plagued by fear, anger and hatred. In the end, however, she manages to turn her negative feelings into positive energy. She founds a school for black youngsters and becomes

53 involved in black community life. She is even reconciled with her brother Jonah. We might argue that she finally reaches the Internalization stage of the Cross model. Race is still crucial in her life, yet Ruth is more confident now about her identity: she attains, as mentioned earlier, inner security and comfort with her blackness and can shift attention to ‘other identity concerns’ such as poverty, social class and career development (Cross 113). As Ruth passes through every stage, showing all the typical features and qualities, her racial identity development is the perfect embodiment of Cross Nigrescence model. She thus confirms and substantiates the prevailing views on race and identity. The fact that the other characters fit less easily in one of the models, takes nothing away from their sincerity and credibility or from Powers’ merits as writer. Their characterisation remains convincing.

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CHAPTER 4: GRAND NOVELS HAVE GRAND IDEAS RACE, CULTURE & HISTORY

Richard Powers, it has been said before, is a cerebral writer whose ideas sometimes outstrip his characterisation. In The Time of Our Singing, however, Powers manages to combine both: he depicts believable characters (cf. previous chapter) and he presents great ideas and insights. The three main themes introduced in the novel are race, time and music. All three are linked and interlinked. While the relation between time and music needs no further explanation, Powers clarifies the connection between culture and race by claiming that ‘much of the history of race has been written in music’ (qtd. in Watson). He even gives a scientific explanation for the relationship between the two notions as he emphasises that both sound and light are composed of waves: ‘wavelength’s like color (…) pitch is wavelength too’ (TOS 627). This chapter will further explore the connections between the various themes and will examine some of the motifs of Powers’ eighth novel.

4.1 Culture: Who Gets to Sing What?

-- Music at night in a noisy bar didn’t stop at two colors; it had more shades than would fit into the wildest paint box. (TOS 433)

Since race is a culturally and emotionally charged topic, Powers understood that writing a novel about it was ‘likely to raise the question of authority and cultural ownership’ (in The Paris Review 18). Can a white author take possession of material that is, strictly speaking, not his? Can he do justice to expressing how a black or racially mixed person feels? Highly aware of the challenge, Powers decided to incorporate this dilemma into his story: the relationship between culture and race (both linked to identity) has become a central metaphor in the novel. The story deals with the question of artistic fidelity. It is about who has the right to seize a particular art form and make it his or her own, about ‘who gets to sing what’ (Powers qtd. in Watson). The idea of cultural ownership, the belief that there is a link between culture and race and that people of a particular racial group automatically share the same cultural

55 values and ideas, refers back to the notion of cultural geneticism, mentioned earlier in chapter 1. It has been argued, then, that this cultural geneticism has been on the increase lately, because more and more people tend to replace biological essences with cultural ones. Yet what is the cause of this evolution? Gilroy explains that in a globalising world, where national boundaries are losing their significance and ‘cultural overlap is recognized’, the smallest (cultural) differences become matters of paramount importance. Culture thus becomes ‘a major means of differentiation’, ‘a form of property’ (Gilroy 24). The danger, Gilroy further argues, lies in the role allocated to the body: it ‘is reinvested with the power to arbitrate in the assignment of cultures to peoples’ (24). In other words, skin colour provides the basis on which culture is imparted to people. We have argued earlier that this way of thinking is essentially racist as it prescribes that certain forms of culture are not accessible to specific groups of people: whites have no business writing about black people, they are not supposed to play or listen to hip-hop, rap music or jazz while black people have no access to Western concert music or Shakespeare (cf. Appiah 90). The idea of authority and cultural ownership is fully examined and developed in The Time of Our Singing where the protagonists talk and think about culture, or more specifically, music, in terms of rights, ownership, identity and belonging. A central question and dilemma in the novel is whether it is defensible for black persons to dedicate their lives to the delights and beauties of white culture. Or are they disloyal to their own culture and heritage by doing so?

“How did she start fooling with music that, music that…” “That didn’t belong to her?” Jonah’s voice floats a lazy challenge. He’s ready to go at it if she is. “Yeah.” That showdown courage born in terror. “Yeah. That wasn’t hers.” “Whose is it? Who owns it, girl?” “White German intellectual Jewish guys. Like you and Da.” “ (…) You think that because somebody dragged your great-great-great- grandfather onto a European ship against his will, a thousand years of written music is off-limits?” (TOS 302)

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Throughout, the protagonists have to fight an endless battle against racial and cultural prejudice. Jonah and Joseph force their way into the white world of classical music yet remain outsiders, infiltrators, traitors, as it is not in their culture to sing and play European classical music. White people who watch the Strom brothers perform, wonder what these mixed-race men are doing on a classical-music stage singing Schubert and Brahms, while black people accuse them to be flunkies ‘of the white culture game’ (TOS 381). Both sides feel betrayed as it is believed that there is ‘no culture without owners, without owned’ (TOS 573). During his musical career, Jonah cannot escape being labelled and classified as a negro artist (‘he could be an artist only if he’d wear the alien badge’, TOS 405). Even though it is firmly claimed by musical commentators and journalists that ‘race is not an issue in the concert scene’, that ‘the monuments of classical music were color-blind, never troubling with such ephemera’ (TOS 396), the opposite is true, as cultural elites and classical music audiences discriminate, pigeon-hole and mark as much as anyone else. Musical critics can only accept Jonah as a ‘black’ singer. When a reviewer praises him as ‘one of the finest Negro recitalists this country has ever produced’ (TOS 313), Jonah cannot take it as a compliment: ‘He’d been “niggered” before, more brutally. But not from a major music critic in the country’s leading paper’ (TOS 313). Another racist incident arises when Jonah auditions to become an opera singer. The jury of the Metropolitan Opera is impressed about his vocal range and capacities and they offer him the leading role in a brand-new opera called The Visitation. It seems the chance of a lifetime but Jonah resolutely turns down the offer as soon as he finds out that he is chosen to perform the part of ‘The Negro’. Jonah refuses to be typecast: he does not want to be ‘the Caruso of black America’ or ‘the Sidney Poitier of opera’ (393). He wants to be considered on his own merit rather than to be labelled a black artist. Marian Anderson, the real-life African American contralto, who plays an important symbolic role in the novel (see further), struggles with similar authority questions. People do not expect her to sing classical (white) music:

She has never been a champion of the cause, except through the life she daily lives. (…) Not a week passes when she doesn’t shock listeners by taking ownership of Strauss or Saint-Saëns. (TOS 45)

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Another example of cultural geneticism and racial prejudice is that it is taken for granted that Joseph loves black music and that he is good at improvising on the piano simply because of his skin colour. He, however, grows up with sheet music, knowing all about European composers and musicians and nothing about jazz or popular songs. When he eventually has to play so-called black music in the Glimmer Room in Atlantic City, he has to learn how to sound black and how to improvise: ‘Teresa thought the music was mine, by blood, down in my fingers, when all I did was steal it off records’ (TOS 442). Connected to the idea of cultural ownership is the belief that racism is not so much driven by a fear of difference, but by the threat of ‘being lost in likeness’ (TOS 630). It is suggested in the novel that hatred comes down to the protection of property values, safeguarding one’s sense of uniqueness. Delia believes that racism is invoked by the dominant culture’s fear of losing otherness and distinctness:

“People hate us,” I tell her. “Not you, JoJo. They hate themselves” “We’re different,” I explain. “Maybe they’re not scared of different. Maybe they’re scared of same. If we turn out to be too much like them, who can they be?” (…) “People who attack you with can’t are afraid you already can.” “Why? How can that hurt them?” “They think all good things are like property. If you have more, they must have less.” (TOS 517)

In his study Against Race, Gilroy argues that we ought to be prepared ‘to give up the illusion that cultural and ethnic purity has ever existed’ (251). This point is confirmed in The Time of Our Singing where boundaries between cultures are fading and various cultures borrow from one another, thus evolving ‘into new forms that are neither one thing or another, but a blending’ (Watson). Joseph recognises that everything is a mix and a massive crossover: ‘Everyone would finally sing and listen to everything’ (TOS 319). ‘Sampling the sampler. The whole system runs on theft. Tell me what hasn’t already been stolen?’ (TOS 589). Cousin Delia makes a similar statement on cultural exchange:

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“Every song we sing’s got white notes running through it. (…) We’re making a little country here, out of mutual theft. They come over into our neck of the woods, take all we got. We sneak over into their neighborhood, middle of the night, grab a little something back, something they didn’t even know they had, something they can’t even recognize no more!” (TS 573)

In The Time of Our Singing this cultural mixing is reflected in, among other things, the ‘Crazed Quotation’ game played by the Strom family. It is a game in which they harmonise and combine classical music with jazz. There are no limits to nor restrictions on the combinations: each song and every genre could be fused. ‘Crazed Quotations’ is a musical journey which takes them from Brahms to Dixieland, from Cherubini to Cole Porter:

The game produced the wildest mixed marriages, love matches that even the heaven of half-breeds looked sidelong at. Her Brahms Alto Rhapsody bickered with his growled Dixieland. Cherubini crashed into Cole Porter. Debussy, Tallis, and Mendelssohn shacked up in unholy ménages à trois. (TOS 13)

As it recurs at several times and in different contexts, the ‘Crazed Quotations’ game forms an important motif in the story. It describes how the protagonists translate their mixed racial origin in music, how they deal with cultural ownership and hybridity. Mixing is considered to be ‘the sound’ of the future. At the end of the novel, when Joseph is a teacher at Ruth’s school, it is this kind of mixed music he teaches his pupils: ‘I get them to teach me the songs they know. I trade them for a few old tunes’ (TOS 600). It is an example of ‘classics meet the streets’: ‘Bird and Fish, Incorporated (…) Old wine in new bottles’ (TOS 614). Former white and black music are now merging in one unit: ‘Every music in America had gone brown’ (TOS 583). This association of both cultural and racial mixing with the future, is rather typical. Mixed-race persons are often introduced in literature as a ‘promise for an innovative potential’ (Sollors 1997:232). They embody ‘a vision of the future’ (Sollors 1997:232). This faith in a promising future is echoed in The Time of Our Singing where David and Delia also believe that the future has a lot to offer. For them it is ‘the only place bearable’ (TOS 345). They believe that their mixed-race children are the

59 forerunners of a better and race-free time. The things that are not yet possible in their own lives, will be in their children’s lives:

They can map it slowly, their best-case future. Month by month, child by child. Their sons will be the first ones. Children of the coming age. Charter citizens of the postrace place, both races, no races, race itself: blending unblended, like notes stacked up in a chord. (TOS 345)

Whereas the race-free experiment by David and his wife was doomed to failure (they were ‘lost in time, guessed wrong – too early, too hopeful by decades’, TOS 274), at the end of the novel, ‘multiracialism’s hot’ (TOS 598) and it is suggested that in the near future ‘everybody’s going to be a few drops everything’ (TOS 624). Though an ultimate conclusion on American race relations is never reached (see further), the ending of the novel nevertheless seems to imply that someday the bird and fish will be able to make either a ‘bish’ or ‘fird’ (TOS 630- 631). ‘Mixing shows us which way time runs. I have seen the future, and it is mongrel’ (TOS 624).

4.2 History: Uncanting the Can’t

-- Easter 1939. This day, a nation turns out for its own wake. The air is raw, but scrubbed by last night’s rain. Sunday rises, red and protestant (…) The palette of this dawn is pure Ashcan School (…) But memory will forever replay this day in black and white, the slow voice-over pan of Movietone. (TOS 30)

In The Time of Our Singing, Powers blends fiction with facts as his fictional story unfolds against a real, historical background. Historical characters and events intersect with fictitious ones. There is a cameo role for Einstein, the character of David Strom is involved in the Manhattan project, a brother of Delia dies during the Vietnam War, references are made to the Million Man Marsh, Rosa Parks, the murder of Emmett Till, the death of Malcolm X, the riots in Los Angeles, the Rodney King Trial, etc. The novel thus deals with the entire twentieth century American race history, though never extensively or exclusively. Many historical events mentioned in the novel merely serve as a general backdrop for the story. Powers only talks about them in passing. He has been critiqued for this. Mendelsohn argues in The New York Times

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(§13) that it seems as if the author ‘is dutifully ticking items off a laundry list of race- related episodes in American history’. David Abrams makes a similar complaint in January Magazine (§7), saying that Powers wrote about the civil rights era with ‘a checklist beside the computer’. There is some truth in these criticisms for not all historical references are as skilfully integrated in the story, though many of them are and we will look at a few of them in more detail. In April 1939, Marian Anderson, the great African American contralto, was not allowed to perform at Constitution Hall, owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), for the simple reason that she was black. It was a huge scandal, though not an isolated incident. Anderson was ‘neither the first nor the last black performer’ who was denied access to the Hall, as the DAR kept a ‘white artists only’ policy (Sandage 143). The case of Marian Anderson, however, received and attracted more attention than ever. National as well as international newspapers reported on the incident, petitions were signed, foreign artists expressed their disbelief and even the presidency took a stance. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, outraged by the act of racial prejudice and discrimination, publicly resigned her membership in the DAR and together with several black civic leaders and NAACP officers she made it possible for Anderson to sing outdoors, at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday (Sandage 144). The initiative became an overwhelming success. Over 75,000 people came to listen and many more followed the concert via live national radio broadcasts. As it was ‘the first black mass action to evoke laudatory national publicity’ (Sandage 136), the concert had a highly symbolic value: it was seen as an exciting beginning, opening up the way to democracy and equal rights. It also signified the start of a public discussion on civil rights and triggered off a whole series of public meetings and protest marches, which would be held on the Mall in Washington in the following decades (Sandage 136). Marian Anderson’s concert plays a central and emblematic role in The Time of Our Singing, as Powers uses the historical event as the point of departure for his story. Somewhere among the anonymous crowd gathered on the Mall, he creates and locates Delia Daley and David Strom. Both fictional characters come to hear the magical voice of Anderson, each for different reasons. For the musically talented Delia, Marian Anderson is the hope of the future, she stands for ‘all that sound can do’ (TOS 37).

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Delia’s feelings for the black contralto far exceed those of simple admiration or respect: ‘Miss Anderson is her freedom’ (TOS 38), her first and best teacher, her ‘vanguard’ (TOS 37), her ultimate example and source of inspiration (by listening to Anderson on the radio, Delia ‘has shaped her own mezzo’, TOS 37). For David, it is the second time he hears Marian Anderson perform. Enchanted by her beautiful sound during a concert in Vienna, he is excited ‘to hear again the only American singer who can rival the greatest Europeans in tearing open the fabric of space-time’ (TOS 41). The symbolic power and significance of the Eastern concert, however, escapes the German immigrant. Powers’ interpretation and fictionalisation of the concert is built on real historical facts and is true to the official version of the event. His account takes the form of a newsreel: he sketches the general situation, he describes the weather conditions, gives the actual number of listeners, explains the reasons and causes for the controversy surrounding the concert and offers a powerful impression of the impact and the hopeful and thrilling atmosphere on the Mall:

Something here, a thing more than music, is kicking in the womb. Something no one could have named two months ago now rises up, sucking in its first stunned breaths. (…) This is not a concert. It’s a revival meeting, a national baptism, the riverbanks flooded with expectation. (TOS 39)

After he has set the scene, Powers leaves the objective and historic reality aside to enter his fictional world. He zooms in on Delia and follows her on her trip from Philadelphia to the capital. He gives expression to her personal expectations, dreams and fears: ‘She feels the danger, right down her spine. A crowd this size could trample her without anyone noticing’ (TOS 39). In this overwhelming mass of people, Powers also situates his other protagonist, David, ‘ein Fremder unter lauter Fremden’ (TOS 43):

Far to the northwest, a mile toward Foggy Bottom, a man walks toward her. Twenty-eight, but his fleshy face looks ten years older. His neck is a pivot, his eyes behind their black horn-rims steadily measuring the life all around him. (TOS 40)

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United in their admiration for the powerful and beautiful voice of Marian Anderson, Delia and David, two entirely different persons, find each other and against all better judgement they fall in love. The specific details of their first encounter are not immediately revealed but, as Powers retells the episode at various moments in the novel (each time disclosing new elements), at the very end, the picture of what happens that day on the Mall, the future they saw, is finally complete. Powers’ account of the historic Easter concert involves, apart from the fictitious characters and aspects, one other particularly original element. At a certain point, the impersonal narrator stops registering Delia and David’s movements and switches instead to Marian Anderson’s point of view. Suddenly the reader no longer finds himself among the audience but on the stage, looking out across the enormous crowd. Marian Anderson becomes the focaliser, her glance is followed. This clever narrative strategy allows Powers to approach the event from a different angle and to introduce new elements. He can focus on the artist’s feelings and thoughts:

The fear coming over her isn’t stage fright. She has drilled too long over the course of her life to doubt her skill. (…) The music will be perfect. But how will it be heard? (…) From this hopeful host there pours a need so great, it will bury her. She’s trapped at the bottom of an ocean of hope, gasping for air. From the day it took shape, she resisted this grandstand performance. But history leaves her no choice. Once the world made her an emblem, she lost the luxury of standing for herself. (TOS 44)

The passage which has Marian Anderson as its focaliser forms a very powerful and convincing piece of writing, nicely integrated in the rest of the story. Throughout, Anderson plays a symbolic role as she is the one who brings David and Delia, ‘the bird and fish’, together. The Mall is a sacred place as well and will be (re)visited by different members of the Strom family on at least two other occasions. Ruth and David attend ‘The March on Washington’ in 1963. Joseph and his two nephews go to ‘The Million Man March’ in 1995. Not surprisingly these are two watershed events in America’s racial history. Powers presents the historic events in the same way as he has done with Anderson’s concert: the objective facts function as backdrop for the fictional story he is telling. The characters are witnesses to what will become history in times yet to come.

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Sometimes, however, they are already conscious of the historic potential. This is the case when David hears the ‘I have a dream’ speech of Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“You must wake up. You must hear this. This is history.” (…) She hears a swelling baritone, a voice she has heard before, but never like this. We also have come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now (…) Something happens in the crowd, some alchemy worked by the sheer force of his voice. The words bend back three full times in staggered echoes. Her father is right: history. (TOS 276)

Another racial episode discussed at length in the novel is the brutal murder of Emmett Till in 1955. It is the story of a fourteen-year-old black boy from Chicago, who went on a holiday in the South, visiting relatives in Mississippi. The boy, unacquainted with the severe segregation in the region, makes the terrible mistake of saying ‘bye, baby’ to a white woman in a grocery store. It is an act unthinkable in the South and repercussions are unavoidable. A few days go by without anything happening, but then, one evening, the shop owner and his brother-in-law come after the boy to teach him a lesson. They beat the young Emmett to death and dump his mutilated body in a river where it is found three days later by fishermen. Emmett Till’s mother is devastated when she sees her boy. She decides to make her grief public: the world needs to know about the brutality ands senselessness of the crime. She insists on an open casket funeral and photographs of the disfigured body appear in magazines and newspapers. Thousands of people come to watch the memorial service. The murderers are soon caught and arrested but despite all the evidence and testimonies, the murder trial turns out to be a complete farce as an ‘all-white, all-male jury’ (Goldsby 252) declares the killers innocent on all counts. The world is shocked and outraged at so much injustice. The Emmett Till murder and trial is a dark page in American history. Powers is not the first author to bring a fictionalised account of the incident. Toni Morrison, for example, has written a play about it, called Dreaming Emmett, and Bob Dylan has dedicated a song to the young boy, ‘The Death of Emmett Till’. Powers’ recounting of the brutal crime includes all known details and proven facts. It is told in a distanced but gripping way and brought as a separate chapter. The reader wonders at first how the

64 story is linked to the fictional frame story of the Strom family. A sudden switch from the impersonal narrator to Joseph’s point of view explains the reason for bringing up the episode: Delia and David fight about whether or not they should show the picture of Emmett’s body to their children:

This is the photo my parents fight over at the end, those two who never fought over anything (…) “I’m sorry,” the one whispers. “No boy their age should be allowed to see such a thing.” “Allowed?” the other says. “Allowed? We have to make them look.” (TOS 102)

In his dealing with two other famous American civil-rights events (the Watts Riots of 1965 and the violent aftermath of the Rodney King trial in 1992), Powers describes how racial tensions may evolve into chaotic, violent and heated demonstrations. In the novel, Jonah and Joseph get caught up in the Watts Riots. They are in Los Angeles at the time of the outbreak of the riots for their first recording session. Jonah is curious and insists on them taking a look. A mesmerising account of the agitated and apocalyptic atmosphere, the growing unrest and violence is given. It is an inferno: stone throwers, violent police officers, shrieks, shouting and screaming, scattered gunshots, plundered shops. Jonah is too light-skinned to be there and he barely escapes from being shot by young black demonstrators (‘This? This ain’t no brother’, TOS 324). Joseph fears that they will not be able to leave the Watts neighbourhood alive:

The whole township was ringed by a thousand policemen, herding it at gunpoint. Behind the police wall was the National Guard. And behind the Guard, the Fortieth Armored Division. We were sealed off, trapped inside the permanent pen. My brother was too light to survive inside, and I was too dark to get us out. (TOS 326)

Eventually, Jonah’s voice will save them from having their faces beaten in by a police officer: ‘The policeman jabbed us on. He was still wondering why he hadn’t clubbed us senseless. Still trying to figure out why the voice had stopped him’ (TOS 327). The two brothers are arrested and released the following day.

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The 1992 Los Angeles Riot, which started after the outcome of the Rodney King trial, is discussed less extensively in the novel. This time it is Jonah alone who gets swept up in the riot. As in a dream and completely out of place, he wanders around the ruined streets. The atmosphere is heated and chaotic. He is physically assaulted and gets seriously injured at the left ear when somebody throws a piece of paving stone at his head. Again he can escape by wonder. The reader learns about the incident only afterwards when Jonah phones Joseph from his hotel room, still reeling from shock. Jonah will not survive the morning:

The stream of dried blood down one side of his pillow made Hans think he’d hemorrhaged. But my brother had simply stopped breathing. The television in his hotel room was on, tuned on the local news. (TOS 619)

To give one more example of the relationship between fact and fiction in the novel: the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki lead indirectly to the big argument between the Strom parents and Delia’s father, Dr William Daley. The old doctor, who understands the political necessity of the first explosion, refuses to accept the second blast. He wonders what ‘civilized people could defend such action’ and claims that ‘it seems to project a final superiority’, ‘a world dominance’ he thought they were trying to end with the war (TOS 415). When Dr Daley visits Delia and David to talk things over (he expects some answers and an explanation since David has worked on the bombs in the Manhattan Project), an initially small discussion escalates into a full-scale and unbridgeable argument. This is how Powers proceeds: he keeps track of history by letting important moments in the lives of the fictional Strom family coincide with great historical events. It is a technique which allows the author to interweave and incorporate great ideas, opinions and views in one coherent fictional narrative. To prevent the reader from losing him somewhere along the road, Powers makes continuous (yet smaller) historical and topical allusions: to the ‘hatless boy president’ for instance or to the fact that ‘the continent is awash in spies, beatniks’ (TOS 5), to Roosevelt’s fireside chats, the Great depression, the Rosa Parks bus drive, etc.

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4.3 Race: Older Than History and Built to Outlast It

-- “Race trumps family. It’s bigger than anything. Bigger than husband and wife. Bigger than brother and sister…” Bigger than objects in the sky. Bigger than knowing. (TOS 386)

In our analysis of The Time of Our Singing, we have thus far discussed Powers’ characterisation and portrayal of mixed-race people. We have examined the ways in which he deals with culture and studied his fictionalisation of historic characters and events. We have also focussed on important ideas presented in the novel, namely the belief that racism is driven as much by a fear of sameness as by a fear of difference and that cultural and racial purity do not longer exist since boundaries between cultures and various categories are fading. What can be deduced from these assertions with regard to race? Are there any other explicit statements made on the subject? What about the one- drop rule, the image of home and other motifs? And does the novel offer a conclusion on or solution for the racial problems in America? This last section will try to find answers to these and similar questions, as it explores the position of the novel in the race debate. In The Time of Our Singing, the social constructionist view on race seems to be confirmed as it is stated and repeated throughout that race is an empty category with no real existence in nature. Racial categories are considered to be arbitrary and constructed. The fluidity and variability of racial boundaries is emphasised in the novel by exposing the inaccuracy and superficiality of using physical characteristics to assign people to different races. Not only does this custom separate closely related family members (‘His son will not be his. Every census will divide them’, TOS 458), it also does not give the desired outcome: Jonah looks like ‘a blood-drained, luminous Arab’ (TOS 17) and his friends in Europe refuse to consider him as black: “You can’t be serious (…) you’re not black, for heaven’s sake” (TOS 540). People’s skin colour is thus not seen as an objective criterion for division and race is not approached as a predetermined fact but as a matter of perspective. David in particular is a staunch advocate of the constructionist approach, as his ideas about time (and the relativity of it) seem to unmask the erroneous belief that race

67 is an essential fact. He firmly states that race is an illogical, social invention, which is not static but in a constant state of flux:

“There is no such thing as race. Race is only real if you freeze time, if you invent a zero point for your tribe. If you make the past an origin, then you fix for the future. Race is a dependent variable. A path, a moving process. We all move along a curve that will break down and rebuild us all.” (TOS 94)

The novel also exhibits the absurdity of the one-drop or hypo-descent rule. Ruth makes clear how ‘the old slaveholder’s property protection’ has become ‘its victims’ only weapon’, how blackness can be seen as an ‘arrow of time’ (TOS 564):

“Funny thing about one drop? If white plus black makes black, and if the mixed- marriage rate is anything above zero per year…” (…) “Follow out the curve. Just a matter of time, and everybody in America will be black.” (TOS 564)

“Hypodescent. (…) It means white can’t protect its stolen property, can’t tell the owners from the owned, except by playing purebred. They’re pure all right. Pure invention. One drop? One drop, as far back as you can go? Every white person in America is passing.” (TOS 563)

It is important to note that the everyday reality of race is not denied in the novel: ‘Race is like the pyramids’, Jonah says, ‘older than history and built to outlast it’ (TOS 386). Nor is the continuing power and existence of the one-drop rule misjudged. When Ruth, for example, asks her brothers how black their mother was, Jonah can only think in terms of this rule: ‘No scale, no fractions, no how much. Not something this country lets you have degrees of. The only shade Americans see’ (TOS 296). Race is present on almost every page of the book. Apart from the many racial incidents that we have already referred to (the instances of discrimination and racial prejudice, the cases of naming, the suspicious death of Delia, etc.) and the identity issues in which race plays a crucial role, the novel focuses especially on people’s eagerness to maintain racial boundaries, their determination to keep the bloodlines pure and their firmness to assign people to existing categories. Mixed-race individuals, people who have violated racial barriers and fall in between racial groups, have to pay

68 for being unidentifiable: the Strom brothers are described as ‘a moving violation’ and their ‘breakaway shade’ is seen as ‘the public record of [the] family’s private crime’ (TOS 5). The one-drop rule, however, pushes them in one direction: Jonah, Joseph and Ruth are all three identified as ‘Colored’ on their birth certificate since a mixed-race category is not (yet?) officially recognised. Is it possible for individuals to ignore and overcome prescribed identities and affiliations? It is suggested in the novel that choice (especially for black and mixed-race people) is harshly restricted and even non-existent (‘choice and race were mortal opposites’, TOS 287) and that racial ascription cannot be discussed or changed:

“White’s just one color. Black’s everything else. You gonna raise them to have a choice? That choice don’t belong to you. It don’t even belong to them. Everybody else is gonna make it for them!” (TOS 486)

A central dilemma in The Time of Our Singing is whether colour blindness is the right response to racial injustice or merely a false illusion. Delia and David are convinced that ignoring and denying racial differences will lead to a better future. They teach and advise their children to run their own race in the hope that the rest of the American population will automatically follow: ‘Their children were supposed to be the first beyond all this, the first to jump clean into the future that this fossil hate so badly needs to recall’ (TOS 274). Delia and David refuse to see that as long as race is shaping the world, escape from it is a fantasy, a delusion:

Papap says, What do you think they’ll learn the minute they set foot out of your house? Mama says, Everybody’s going to be mixed. No one’s going to be anything. Papap says, There is no mixed. Da says, Not yet. Papap says, Never will be. It’s one thing or the other. And they can’t be the one, not in this world. It’s the other, girl. You know that. What’s your problem? Mama says, People have to move. What world do you want to live in? Things have to break down, go someplace else. (TOS 425)

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The colour-blind experiment is not exactly an unqualified success. With his wife dead and his daughter disappeared, David realises in the end that it was wrong to think that they could personally change the world. Their naïve dream has broken up the family: ‘Now he knew (…) No one had their own race. No one’s race was theirs to run’ (TOS 358). Conditions were not yet ripe for social change: ‘It’s too soon for this life, too far out ahead of anything their children can reach. Something in this place needs race. Some groundfloor tribalism, something in a soul that won’t be safe or sound in anything smaller or larger’ (TOS 481). The failing experiment seems to imply that a colour-blind attitude or policy does not suffice to successfully put an end to racial injustice. Amy Gutmann’s standpoint is thus echoed and confirmed, as she does not believe that colour-blindness is the answer either (cf. chapter 1). For the world to become a better place it is necessary to disregard race, yet for the world to improve, it should and cannot be forgotten either. It is, in other words, a catch-22 situation. It is claimed in The Time of Our Singing that ignoring race is a luxury preserved for whites: “‘Beyond’ means white. Only people who can afford ‘beyond’” (TOS 487), ‘Beyond color means hide the black man. Wipe him out’ (TOS 425). Since black people are still a minority in an overall white society, they are constantly confronted with and made conscious of their skin colour. They cannot escape racial ascription. Racism is therefore often seen as ‘a defining attribute of whiteness or an intrinsic property of the power it holds’ (Gilroy 219). The history of slavery, the exploitation and subordination of coloured people, the social and political inequality, the practices of segregation, etc. have not particularly helped to improve the reputation of the white race. Gilroy, however, argues that it is wrong to assume that only white people can be racist and that blacks, because they have no power, cannot (220). In The Time of Our Singing, hostilities are conducted on both sides of the colour line. Though less obvious perhaps than the numerous instances of white racism, the black and racially-mixed people depicted in the novel do not steer clear of racial intolerance either. It suffices to refer to Ruth’s determination to hate everything that is white or to Dr Daley’s reaction to his daughter when he learns that David is a Jewish atheist foreigner (“Covering all your bases, aren’t you?”, TOS 220), to realise that – even if the motives underlying their behaviour may be different – racism is not absent among members of the black community.

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One of the central motifs and images figuring prominently in the novel is that of home as a safe shelter and a private, little world within the larger one. We have already indicated in chapter 2 the importance and significance of home as a place where multiracial people and migrants can hide from external, negative opinion, where they can be who they want to be. In The Time of Our Singing, this idea is reinforced and fully developed. There is a sharp contrast between indoors (private, nuclear family life) and outdoors (the larger society). Home for the Strom family stands for security and stability. Inside their house, they are safe from harm, they can be themselves, they can ‘run their own race’. Outside, however, the family encounters racism and there is always a sense of menace, a constant danger. Delia cannot just walk on the street with David without pretending to be his hired help and when Jonah and Joseph are forced outside the house to play with the other boys in the neighbourhood, they are bullied and oppressed. It is during these short outdoor moments that the Strom brothers get their first glimpse of what it means to be different.

Melting pot New York puts them through a blast furnace; five minutes out on the sidewalk threatens to melt them down to slag. But indoors, all ore belongs to them. They can sing any tune going, and, more often than not, make any two of them fit together. (TOS 332)

Realising that ‘the world’s relentless purifiers would come after happiness through any open chink’ (TOS 9), Delia Daley turns the family’s rented house into a fortress where outside influences are restricted to a minimum. She and David create a home situation entirely based on the strength of their love and their belief in a more humane future. Cut off from daily realities, it is a kind of Eden, a colour-blind paradise, a utopia. They fill their evenings with the things they love, with solving mathematical problems and playing musical games: ‘music means those years of harmonizing together, still in the shell of our family’ (TOS 4). The three children, still ignorant about racial issues, are happy and content. The family forms a strong unit and we get the impression that nothing can come between them. Race, however, turns out to be bigger than family. The family shell breaks open when an explosion reduces the house to ashes and Delia gets killed by the fire. With the house and Delia gone, stranded in the evil

71 outer world, the dream of a life and future beyond race can no longer be maintained. The family falls apart. They will never all sing together again. The tragic impossibility of the racially mixed marriage and the artificial utopianism of the Strom home is emphasised in the novel by countless references to the improbable pairing of the bird and the fish. An old Jewish saying (‘the bird and the fish can fall in love, but where will they build their nest?’) forms a thread throughout the story as numerous variations on the proverb are made:

The bird and fish can fall in love… … but the place they build in will blow out from underneath it (TOS 344) … but their only working nest will be the grave (TOS 470) … but there’s no possible nest but no nest (TOS 484) … but the here and now would scatter every thieved twig they might assemble (TOS 512)

The first part is always promising (can is a modal auxiliary, signalling possibility and ability), the second part introduces potential objections and shatters the former illusion. The phrases emphasise the difficulties and problems involved in a mixed-race marriage and underline the hopelessness of the endeavour. They also seem to suggest that no one can overcome racial differences. On the very last page of the novel (which forms at the same time the beginning of the story as it recounts the encounter between Delia and David on the Mall in 1939), the two fictional characters make their own variations on the theme. Still figuring out the prospects of a future together, they consider the different possibilities and options: ‘the bird and fish can make a bish’, ‘the fish and bird can make a fird’, ‘the bird can make a nest on the water’ or ‘the fish can fly’ (TOS 631). What is novel’s conclusion on the matter? Will fish ever fly? It is not entirely clear whether a final conclusion on racial matters is reached in The Time of Our Singing, though there is a clear sense of historical change and progress throughout the novel. Instances of racism and racial violence may continue up till the end, the terror of the anti-miscegenation laws, the panic in the race-riots, the incidents of severe segregation, etc. have nevertheless given way to a more hopeful atmosphere where everything can be mixed and people appear to have more of a choice. The novel is thus

72 certainly sending a positive message. The ambiguity and uncertainty about the ending, however, is particularly due to the novel’s non-linear structure and its turning back on various episodes at various times. On the very last pages, the past, present and future all seem to merge. As the story returns to the Marian Anderson concert and David and Delia are weighing up the various possibilities and the pros and cons of a life together, it is difficult to say whether this is meant to be a promising note for the future (one day all this will be possible) or a painful confirmation of their naïve hope (knowing all we know, this can be seen as a cynical form of optimism). Powers leaves the door open to both options as he prefers not to comment.

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CONCLUSION

This dissertation has investigated how the American novelist Richard Powers deals with issues of race and identity in his novel The Time of Our Singing. The main purpose was to examine how knowledge of and familiarity with scholarly conceptions, schemes and theories may lead to a better understanding of Powers’ fictional story. Two introductory chapters have helped to establish an outline and theoretical basis for the literary analysis. Academic writings on the concepts of race and identity have been explored and summarised. Given the vast body of literature dealing with the two notions, this first, theoretical overview did not aim at giving a full and complete synopsis of everything that has been written on the subjects. Much rather did it seek to put forward some interesting insights and relevant models for analysing, exploring and assessing Powers’ eighth novel. It has become clear from our analysis in part two that common scholarly theories and paradigms are extremely useful in explaining even the least little detail in Powers’ fictional narrative. Apart from his characterisation of mixed-race people (which is, as we have seen in chapter three, not stereotypical yet greatly based on the models of racial identity development introduced by leading sociologists), Powers also unmistakably confirms the social constructionist view on race, as it is claimed in the novel that race is a social creation rather than a biological reality. What it means to be black or white is not a fixed quality but changes significantly over time. Race does not involve the same features for everyone or in every situation. As the story moves through the twentieth century (from the early 1920s and 30s to the troubled decades and up to contemporary society), Powers shows how the meaning and importance of race and the overall atmosphere gradually alter. In The Time of Our Singing, Powers supports the idea that it is a fallacy to think that racial and cultural purity have ever existed. As he establishes an interesting link between race, music and (the relativity of) time, Powers makes clear how boundaries between various groups and categories are collapsing, how everything and everyone is a mix. Racism, however, remains a continuing and ever-present feature in present-day

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America and the defeat and crossing of barriers and borders is not particularly welcomed. Even though purity may be a false illusion, it is one people persist in believing in. The idea of cultural ownership and geneticism proves to be significant in this respect. As we have seen in chapter four, Powers emphasises the political dimension of music and art by making the classical concert scene central to the race conflict. He elucidates how difficult it is for black people to devote their time and life to the delights of classical (so-called white) music. Interracial marriages form another delicate business in The Time of Our Singing. Powers exposes how mixed-race couples and their hybrid offspring are still, even in contemporary America, repudiated and misjudged. They are denied the option of associating with the group of their individual choice and may therefore encounter serious problems of identity and affiliation. Powers thus underlines that, despite the changes and improvements, people are still divided in various groups based on skin colour and other physical peculiarities and that racial discrimination, prejudice and other incidents are still ubiquitous. Powers confirms, in other words, what others have claimed before, namely that the influence, effects and significance of race cannot be denied and that a future transcending racial boundaries is still an idealistic proposal.

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REFERENCES

Primary Literature

Powers, Richard. The Time of Our Singing. London: Vintage, 2004.

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