44 pages • 1 hour read
The Intuitionist
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Themes
The Promise and Perils of Racial Uplift
Racial uplift is a principle that calls on the wealthiest and most educated Black Americans to lift up their race. The term was popularized around the turn of the century by Black intellectuals like W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. In his 1903 essay “The Talented Tenth,” which refers to an economic and political leadership class among African Americans, Du Bois wrote, “The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth.” (Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Talented Tenth.” The Negro Problem. New York: J. Pott & Company. 1903.)
Over the years, the concept of racial uplift as an effective vehicle for achieving equal rights has come under increased scrutiny—including by Du Bois himself, who observed in frustration that many Black leaders never returned to their communities after achieving professional success. More modern critiques point out that racial uplift fails to address the institutionalized nature of systemic racism, with University of Maryland Professor Christopher H. Foreman:
[T]he successive strategies embraced by the champions of racial uplift have all encountered their practical and political limits. For the most part these strategies have not so much failed as fallen victim to inevitable exhaustion. (Foreman, Christopher H., Jr. “Black America: The Rough Road to Racial Uplift.” Brookings Review. Issue 16(2). 1998.)
With this context in mind, readers can see how The Intuitionist functions as an allegory interrogating the potential and limitations of racial uplift. Central to this allegory is the symbol of the elevator, as each mention of “elevation,” “verticality,” and “uplift” is fraught with racial implications. Lila Mae’s mantra—“Verticality is such a risky enterprise” (44)—is particularly evocative, given that gains made by Black Americans have often been met with violent backlash by white communities. An especially stark example of this was the 1921 Tulsa massacre, during which mobs of white residents, supported by local officials, descended on that city’s Black Wall Street, killing hundreds and displacing thousands more.
Lila Mae’s character arc also shows the limitations of racial uplift. Although she has risen to a level of professional success in the elevator industry enjoyed by only one other Black person in her city, she is still relegated to a neighborhood that is shut out of institutional wealth and many public services—she calls it “the pace verticality indicts” (185). Lila Mae’s success has put her in no better position to lift up her race, as most of her colleagues view her as a token at best and an inferior at worst.
By the novel’s end, Lila Mae’s attitude toward racial uplift is left ambiguous. She discovers that Intuitionism—the supposed engine powering the “second elevation” or true racial uplift—was a joke invented by Fulton. Yet like Fulton, she clings to the lie as if it there may be some truth to it, continuing to write in her hero’s voice and sending partial blueprints to various stakeholders in the elevator industry. Lila Mae promises to send the complete blueprints once the world is ready for them, suggesting that while uplift is possible, it can only be achieved once racially-biased systems and institutions are dismantled.
Moving Through the World with Double Consciousness
Another of Du Bois’s concepts explored in The Intuitionist is double consciousness. In 1903’s The Souls of Black Folk, where the term first appeared, Du Bois defines double consciousness as “always looking at one's self through the eyes [of a white supremacist society] and measuring oneself by the means of a nation that looked back in contempt.” Black Americans are thus conscious of themselves and their identities from two perspectives: their own and that of a racist country.
This split manifests in all four of the book’s major Black characters: Lila Mae, Fulton, Pompey, and Natchez. Lila Mae is acutely aware of the subtle gestures and verbal digs whites make in her presence, whether her inspector colleagues or the building superintendent she meets at the start of the novel. One way she deals with this is to wrest some measure of control over how others view her. Lila Mae primarily does this by contorting her face into a hard scowl whenever she is about to enter white spaces. She refuses to betray the toll she bears as a Black woman in mid-century America, opting instead to “make such a sad face hard” (57). Lila Mae also utilizes this ability to alter how others view her to her advantage. For example, when she disguises herself as a kitchen staff member at the Funicular Follies, she leaves her “face” at home, causing none of her colleagues to recognize her. She thus modulates between being seen and being unseen.
For Fulton, the experience of double consciousness is fraught in a different way, given that he lives as a white man for his entire adult life. Although he moves through the world as a white man and is seen as a white man, Fulton remains honest with himself about his racial identity—or at least that’s what Lila Mae infers from his writings. So while Fulton’s ability to pass as white makes him “seen” by the mainstream world in a way other Black characters are not, his knowledge that this recognition is built on a lie further disrupts his conception of his identity.
Pompey, meanwhile, may be the most confident of these characters when it comes to navigating the pitfalls of double consciousness. He takes an opportunistic approach toward how others see him, suffering what Lila Mae views to be insults to his dignity because he believes that’s the best way to do right by his family. Whether or not this approach will succeed in allowing him to move his kids out of an increasingly dangerous neighborhood is an open question, however.
Finally, Natchez—later revealed to be Raymond Coombs—presents a particularly explicit manifestation of double consciousness. He is a literal double agent, adopting the mannerisms of an unassuming and inexperienced young man from Mississippi, when in reality he is a ruthless corporate consultant for Arbo. He is so attentive to his adopted persona that he asks Lila Mae for advice near the end of the novel on how to portray his character more convincingly. Coombs’s duality is also reflected in the fact that his employer “lets” him keep a portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. on his office wall—as long as he does his job perpetuating a status quo that will never sacrifice profits for gains toward equal rights.
Black Irony as a Way to Cope with Racial Oppression
Despite the serious and profound implications of the racial allegory at the book’s heart, The Intuitionist is a very funny book. Aside from the absurdity evident in the book’s setting and premise, there is no shortage of pithy one-liners inspired by the detective novels that so influenced Whitehead.
Laughter also plays an important thematic role in the novel. At numerous points in the book, Black characters erupt in laughter, albeit in very different contexts. When Chancre falls off the replica of Otis’s Safety Elevator at the Funicular Follies, Lila Mae cannot help bursting into laughter. It is understandable for her to be tickled by the sight of her opponent and the head of the white elevator industry establishment embarrass himself. That laughter, however, extends to include her joy at possessing the secret knowledge of Fulton’s racial identity and his success at hiding in plain sight for decades.
Meanwhile, Fulton also falls into uncontrollable laughter at having fooled the elevator industry into believing in a theory as seemingly absurd as Intuitionism. In reflecting on this prank, Lila Mae says twice in one paragraph, “No wonder he laughed” (238). There is a darker implication to his laughter, given that the “joke” he finds so hilarious is essentially the joke of racial uplift, and the absurdity of believing that the white mainstream would ever allow Black Americans to achieve “elevation.”
Scholar Allie Sipe of Washington State University calls these examples of “Black irony.” Coined by the journalist Touré, Black irony uses humor in an attempt to “reconcile the failures of racial uplift” by reclaiming one’s emotional response to painful racialized images. In this view, even Pompey’s laughter at the Funicular Follies’ atrocious minstrel show might be viewed as an exercise in Black irony, a contention made by Sipe. Thus, Fulton’s recasting of uplift as a “joke” is perhaps a more powerful statement than it first appears. This reclamation may also be why Lila Mae, despite discovering that Intuitionism is made-up, continues to carry Fulton’s torch at the end of the novel. The “second elevation” may be a real possibility, a futile hope, or simply a gag—in any case, Lila Mae’s continued allegiance to it is an important act of reclaiming a narrative.
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