In the last days of the Goosie administration, the Surgeon-General of
the United States, Dr. Junius Crookman, published a monograph on the
differences in skin pigmentation of the real whites and those he had
made white by the Black-No-More process. In it he declared, to the
consternation of many Americans, that in practically every instance
the new Caucasians were from two to three shades lighter than the old
Caucasians, and that approximately one-sixth of the population were in
the first group. The old Caucasians had never been really white but
rather were a pale pink shading down to a sand color and a red. Even
when an old Caucasian contracted vitiligo, he pointed out, the skin
became much lighter.
To a society that had been taught to venerate whiteness for over three
hundred years, this announcement was rather staggering. What was the
world coming to, if the blacks were whiter than the whites? Many
people in the upper class began to look askance at their very pale
complexions. If it were true that extreme whiteness was evidence of
the possession of Negro blood, of having once been a member of a pariah
class, then surely it were well not to be so white!
Dr. Crookman's amazing brochure started the entire country to examining
shades of skin color again. Sunday magazine supplements carried long
articles on the subject from the pens of hack writers who knew nothing
whatever of pigmentation. Pale people who did not have blue eyes began
to be whispered about. The comic weeklies devoted special numbers to
the question that was on everyone's lips. Senator Bosh of Mississippi,
about to run again for office, referred several times to it in the
Congressional Record, his remarks interspersed with "Applauses." A
popular song, "Whiter Than White" was being whistled by the entire
nation. Among the working classes, in the next few months, there grew
up a certain prejudice against all fellow workers who were exceedingly
pale.
The new Caucasians began to grow self-conscious and resent the
curious gazes bestowed upon their lily-white countenances in all
public places. They wrote indignant letters to the newspapers about
the insults and discriminations to which they were increasingly
becoming subjected. They protested vehemently against the effort
on the part of employers to pay them less and on the part of the
management of public institutions to segregate them. A delegation
that waited upon President Goosie firmly denounced the social
trend and called upon the government to do something about it. The
Down-With-White-Prejudice-League was founded by one Karl von Beerde,
whom some accused of being the same Doctor Beard who had, as a
Negro, once headed the National Social Equality League. Offices were
established in the Times Square district of New York and the mails
were soon laden with releases attempting to prove that those of
exceedingly pale skin were just as good as anybody else and should
not, therefore, be oppressed. A Dr. Cutten Prodd wrote a book proving
that all enduring gifts to society came from those races whose skin
color was not exceedingly pale, pointing out that the Norwegians and
other Nordic peoples had been in savagery when Egypt and Crete were
at the height of their development. Prof. Handen Moutthe, the eminent
anthropologist (who was well known for his popular work on _The Sex
Life of Left-Handed Morons among the Ainus_) announced that as a result
of his long research among the palest citizens, he was convinced they
were mentally inferior and that their children should be segregated
from the others in school. Professor Moutthe's findings were considered
authoritative because he had spent three entire weeks of hard work
assembling his data. Four state legislatures immediately began to
consider bills calling for separate schools for pale children.
Those of the upper class began to look around for ways to get darker.
It became the fashion for them to spend hours at the seashore basking
naked in the sunshine and then to dash back, heavily bronzed, to their
homes, and, preening themselves in their dusky skins, lord it over
their paler, and thus less fortunate, associates. Beauty shops began
to sell face powders named _Poudre Nègre_, _Poudre le Egyptienne_ and
_L'Afrique_.
Mrs. Sari Blandine (formerly Mme. Sisseretta Blandish of Harlem),
who had been working on a steam table in a Broadway Automat, saw her
opportunity and began to study skin stains. She stayed away from work
one week to read up on the subject at the Public Library and came back
to find a recent arrival from Czecho-Slovakia holding down her job.
Mrs. Blandine, however, was not downhearted. She had the information
and in three or four weeks time she had a skin stain that would impart
a long-wearing light-brown tinge to the pigment. It worked successfully
on her young daughter; so successfully, in fact, that the damsel
received a proposal of marriage from a young millionaire within a month
after applying it.
Free applications were given to all of the young women of the
neighborhood. Mrs. Blandine's stain became most popular and her fame
grew in her locality. She opened a shop in her front room and soon had
it crowded from morning till night. The concoction was patented as
Blandine's Egyptienne Stain.
By the time President-Elect Hornbill was inaugurated, her Egyptienne
Stain Shoppes dotted the country and she had won three suits for
infringement of patent. Everybody that was anybody had a stained skin.
A girl without one was avoided by the young men; a young man without
one was at a decided disadvantage, economically and socially. A white
face became startlingly rare. America was definitely, enthusiastically
mulatto-minded.
Imitations of Mrs. Blandine's invention sprang up like weeds in a
cemetery. In two years there were fifteen companies manufacturing
different kinds of stains and artificial tans. At last, even the Zulu
Tan became the vogue among the smart set and it was a common thing to
see a sweet young miss stop before a show window and dab her face with
charcoal. Enterprising resort keepers in Florida and California, intent
on attracting the _haute monde_, hired naturally black bathing girls
from Africa until the white women protested against the practice on the
ground that it was a menace to family life.
One Sunday morning Surgeon-General Crookman, in looking over the
rotogravure section of his favorite newspaper, saw a photograph of a
happy crowd of Americans arrayed in the latest abbreviated bathing
suits on the sands at Cannes. In the group he recognized Hank Johnson,
Chuck Foster, Bunny Brown and his real Negro wife, former Imperial
Grand Wizard and Mrs. Givens and Matthew and Helen Fisher. All of them,
he noticed, were quite as dusky as little Matthew Crookman Fisher who
played in a sandpile at their feet.
Dr. Crookman smiled wearily and passed the section to his wife.