If we are treating Ragtime like we would treat a book of history, then we must place an importance on the time period the book was written in as a way to shed light on the time period it is depicting. In this case Doctorow is writing in the 1970s, a time that is immediately after what we usually think of as the civil rights movement. While we are reading through Ragtime, we can see a smaller version of the civil rights movement on display as we see Coalhouse Walker interact with those around him.
At the beginning of the book, the narrator claims that in New Rochelle "there were no Negros, there were no immigrants." This can be interpreted as an allegory for how prior to the civil rights movement black people where invisible to society at large. The family is not depicted as extremely racist at the beginning of the book, the simply don't notice their existence and unconsciously participates in a system that keeps blacks underfoot.
Then the family meets Coalhouse Walker. He confronts the family with their own racism by meeting them and refusing to act subservient. At the same time he is as respectable as can be, acting with impeccable manners in both his dealing with the family and with Sarah. This respectability eventually wins over the support of the family. This is very similar to the nonviolent protests staged by MLK and others in the civil rights movement. They confronted people with their racism, but acted so respectably they eventually won over the American public.
Finally, Coalhouse's pride can no longer contain itself and he is no longer content with acting respectably when confronted with racism. Instead, he turns violent and lashes back at the authorities. He declares war on them until they learn to acknowledge him as equal. This corresponds to how after the nonviolent stage of the civil rights movement groups like the Black Panthers who idolized Malcolm X were no longer content to act respectably and wait it out. To compare them to Coalhouse is perhaps a bit unfair since for the most part these organizations did not engage in acts of terror, but you get the idea.
I don't know if Doctorow intentionally wrote it this way or he was just so caught up in his times that he thought this was the logical progression for Coalhouse to make, but the parallels are striking. Interpreting his actions from this perspective will make the final chapters all the more interesting.
Note: Recently in Mr Leff's class I learned that in some circles the term "Civil Rights Movement" has fallen out of favor for being inclusive only of political actions and not including the arts and other stuff and the proper term is "Black Freedom Movement." This really has nothing to do with my post I just thought it was interesting.
The Black Panthers and Nation of Islam and other militant organizations may not have directly engaged in terrorism (though you wouldn't know it by the ways they were hounded, infiltrated, and undermined by the FBI), but the terrifying *prospect* of a disciplined and powerful contingent of black men flaunting their Second Amendment rights had some definite parallels in the fear that Coalhouse's "insurrection" spreads throughout his area.
ReplyDeleteAnd when the subject of Younger Bro's participation is taken into account, the context much more specifically shifts toward white participation in black and other minority liberation movements. The mostly white Weather Underground, for example, actively sought to align themselves with the Panthers--though the Panthers remained skeptical. I definitely see YB's story as following a parallel arc, and raising similar questions.