Brother, can you spare a $50?

"Discuss as you see fit connections between one of the fictional texts (Du Bois, Schuyler, McDuffie) and one of the non-fiction essays (Du Bois, Mullen)."

The idea of "race pride" has always been a controversial, interesting topic. On the one hand, it seems silly to take pride in something you have no choice over; you can't choose your race any more than you can choose your parents. However, racial identity is often so strong that it's easy to latch onto, to define yourself by race. In The Conservation of Races, Du Bois pushes the importance of maintaining a positive, moral African identity. He states that Africans have already given America much of what it is - We are that people whose subtle sense of song has given America its only American music, its only American fairy tales, its only touch of pathos and humor amid its mad money-getting plutocracy. However, in order to come together as a race and become an influential force in America, Du Bois insists that Africans must give up sloth, crime, and prostitution, vices which they've fallen into out of slavery. There is absolutely something worthwhile in the African racial identity, but it must be worked for with integrity.

Switch over to Schuyler's Black No More. In The Conservation of Races, Du Bois addresses ...Negroes of some considerable training, of high minds and motives, who are unknown to their fellows. This suggests that there are African Americans of perhaps lesser training, lesser minds and motives, those who want nothing to do with the African racial identity as Du Bois portrays it. These are the people Schuyler seems to be portraying. Dr. Crookman in his story recalls a sociology teacher's three solutions for the African "problem" in America: To either get out, get white, or get along. Du Bois' solution was more or less to get along; Schuyler goes for "getting white". In the excerpt, Max Disher literally jumps at the opportunity; he has no black pride, he wants only to be successful, and maybe have a chance at that Atlanta girl. Along the way, he encounters a few road bumps: the reporters' treating him as a novelty, nostalgia for the comfortable past and discomfort with the ironically less refined pastimes of white Americans, and the outright disapproval of other African Americans. However, the desire in him to become white and abandon his black identity is so strong that he pushes through.

Du Bois argued that Africans are American in their birth, citizenship, political ideals, language, and religion, but in nothing more. Everything else that Africans as a cultured race have to offer, they should, embracing the hard work in the process. Schuyler, on the other hand, feels that $50 and the abandonment of a rich cultural identity are well worth finally being able to get along in the land of opportunity.