The Curious Case of Coleman Silk

Movies have enriched our lives with such a wealth of stories and characters, behind which talented writers, directors and actors operate like drivers behind the wheel.  By and large, it is all fiction, but to the extent that movies as an art form can illuminate things about ourselves, each other, and the world around us, then they serve a very real purpose.  This week I look at three curious characters, who, in each case, figure in the profound human drama that they inhabit and define.

  

The Human Stain is a Robert Benton film, adapted from a Philip Roth novel, and while critics were lukewarm at best, I saw it as an American tragedy that Anthony Hopkins as Coleman Silk, Nicole Kidman as Faunia Farley, and Gary Sinise as Nathan Zuckerman pull off deftly and powerfully.  The curious love affair between Silk and Farley may be the centerpiece that Benton chose, but the engine that drives the story is a tectonic secret that Silk grew to wear like second skin over his life.

You see, Silk is African American, but unlike his parents, brother and sister, his skin color is so fair that he can, and does, pass as White.  As a Jewish man, in fact.  Silk is a rising talent in the boxing ring as an older adolescent, and his coach encourages him to apply to the University of Pittsburgh and advises him not to mention that he was "colored."  This advice still echoing in his ears, he completes an application to the Navy by checking off the box for "White."

Much later in life, Silk is an esteemed Classics professor, and in taking attendance for one lecture, he wonders if two students who haven't attended a single class five weeks into the course were "spooks."  Silk meant the term as ghost or specter, but when those very students caught wind of his remark, they filed a grievance for racism.  Not so much common nowadays, "spook" is a derogatory term for an African American.

Silk flies off in a rage, abruptly ending a private conference with the college dean and her senior faculty.  He is fully aware of the secondary meanings of the word, but he asks his colleagues how can he possibly have meant "spook" to be a racist insult when he hadn't even laid eyes on those students.  He didn't know that they were African Americans.  But when his inquisitors try to get him to acknowledge the students' complaint, he simply will not hear any of it.

The unfortunate irony of this testy conference, as the story will unfold, is that the dean and faculty do not really know why Silk is so furious.  If they only knew that he himself was African American, then maybe they'd have a much different perspective on the whole grievance.  Yet, decades into a racial and religious lie, Silk doesn't even come close to unveiling that lie to save his professorship and reputation.

This irony is more complex, however.  We may very well believe that Silk didn't mean "spooks" to be racist.  But his flat disavowal of his own race is a kind of reverse racism.  Some Filipinos, for comparison, are ashamed of their own heritage, and prefer to assimilate wholesale into American culture, for instance, and adopt an American (i.e., White) demeanor, mindset and lifestyle.  I know, my family and I were like that.  As for The Human Stain, we'd probably have good ground to stand on in viewing Silk as a closet racist.

Why does Silk disavow his race?  The easy response is, because, ever so fair complexioned, he can.  But the next response is telling:  He simply doesn't identify with "We, the Negro People."  I imagine that some of us are like that:  We don't fashion our identity according to nationality, race or ethnicity.  We don't feel beholden to a particular group, despite the fact that society in general and our family in particular may expect us to feel so.

Consider this exchange between Silk as an adolescent and his mother:

Mrs. Silk: You need to be proud of your race.

Silk: What about me? What about just being proud of being me? It's my life.

Further:

Mrs. Silk: Funny I never thought of you as black or white. Gold, you were my golden child.

The family is clearly a proud African American family, and modeled after Mr. and Mrs. Silk's values, the children are bright, earnest and hardworking.  So as they catch wind of how Silk poses as a White Jew, they aren't just perplexed but also hurt.

While a university student, Silk meets, and falls in love, with Steena Paulsson:

Silk: So, that's an... What is it? Swedish?

Paulsson: Close, it's Danish and Icelandic.

As the couple feel more intimate and comfortable with one another, and want to spend the rest of their lives together, Silk invites her to meet his family.  He is still early in his racial and religious lie, and may have thought that his girlfriend and mother in particular would navigate the apparent differences between them just fine.  But no.  Upon their meeting at the door and together at the dining table, neither Paulsson nor Mrs. Silk could disavow the very fact of race.  It quietly shocked both of them, that each was of a race that neither one expected.

Paulsson, sullen and tearful on their train ride back to the university, confesses that she cannot deal with this.  The racial difference may not have been a major issue for her.  But the fabricated front that was her boyfriend, plus the lingering aftershock over family dinner, must've told her right away that this intimate, comfortable relationship was anything but that. 

It was a very painful lesson learned for Coleman Silk, but the lesson wasn't the right one:  Instead of unveiling his lie, or even acknowledging his African American identity, he redoubles his efforts to pass off as a White man.  His father already dead, he has been telling others that his parents were dead, and in a cruel bit of conversation, shares his fact with his mother.  Deeply hurt, she wonders aloud what he was going to do, if he and his future wife were to raise a family and their children were dark-skinned.  Further, she paints a sorrowful scenario where he wouldn't allow their children and her to see each other:  He'd make her stay inside the train station and sit by a window, where he'd walk by with her grandchildren.

Mrs. Silk: Coleman, you think like a prisoner. You're white as snow, and you think like a slave.

Wise motherly words.

Shame and hatred must've become more powerful, pernicious drivers for that lie, until that reverse racism coursed so deeply in Silk and defined who he was as a man.