Black No More by George Schulyer

This humorous novel, in playing out the consequences of an invented process by which black people can permanently turn their skin white, addresses serious questions of race, religion, class, labor, and other cultural formations of the early twentieth century. It demonstrates very clearly the seriousness of racism, not only in itself, but also as a distraction to masses of people. I was particularly interested in the ways that racism remains a distraction when skin color becomes almost entirely uniform, in the ways that racism and religious intolerance often go hand in hand, in the eugenic and genealogical impulses of the white supremacists in the novel, in the connection between race and the conditions of labor and modernity, and in the novel's final twist. Very intriguing.