Slave on the Block

The Carraways’ desire to help Black people—and their preference for consuming Black culture—could charitably be the efforts of well-intentioned, socially, and politically liberal white people to engage with Black people in a historical moment when such encounters were still rare. Despite their self-proclaimed love of Black people, the Carraways’ actions—and the responses of the Black people with whom they interact—show that they function as racists.

Their racism is not the blunt, overtly white supremacist racism of Michael’s mother, who expects Black people to be servants and to jump at her command. Instead, it’s paternalism, a form of racism in which white people assert control over the autonomy of Black people out of a sense that white people can best make decisions about Black people’s lives, culture, and representation.

The reader sees this form of racism in the painting Boy on the Block and Michael’s musical composition. Anne forces Luther to surrender control over his body and self-representation because she thinks that doing so will allow her to create an authentic picture of “the full soul and sorrow of his people” (Paragraph 30). Luther doesn’t care to pose for her. He sleeps during their sessions, doesn’t show up for them for three days at one point, and is embarrassed to pose nude in front of her. She’s oblivious to his perspective, however.

Michael’s creation of a sonata inspired by Anne’s painting reveals that he shares her paternalistic perspective. Michael is clueless that what he produces is wearisome to Luther, who escapes to Harlem after hours of posing. Because Michael has little understanding of the culture that produced Luther, Michael’s sonata sounds “like ‘Deep River’ [a Black spiritual] in the jaws of a dog” instead of how Michael describes it:  

[It’s a] modern slave plaint, 1850 in terms of 1933. Vieux Carré [a Creole neighborhood in the New Orleans French Quarter, associated with the Old South] remembered on 135th Street. Slavery in the Cotton Club [a Harlem Club that had decorative plantation motifs and allowed only White patrons] (Paragraph 30).

Michael’s ugly artistic creation places Black culture and people firmly in the past, overlaid with a nostalgic take on the slave South that Luther and Mattie reject.

Luther is something more than the Carraways can envision, however. By the end of the story, he is a dandily dressed sophisticate who knows how to arrange flowers and dance the Lindy Hop. After Michael fires him, Mattie explains angrily that she has grown tired of being made to pose after a long day of work and of the Carraway’s belief that it is appropriate to enter her bedroom after one o’ clock in the morning. Her demand that the Carraways pay her and Luther is an assertion of the value of their lives outside the whims and demands of the Carraways. She feels dehumanized and oppressed by their constant violations of her private life. The responses of the Carraways—Michael agrees to pay them, Anne laments her unfinished painting, and Mrs. Carraway simply harumphs—shows that all three are unable to see Luther and Mattie on the Black couple’s own terms.