54 pages • 1 hour read
Imperium in Imperio
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Themes
Institutionalized Racism as Neo-Slavery
Content Warning: This text contains racist language, including racial expletives, and violence, as well as depictions of oppression, enslavement, and death by suicide. This study guide quotes and obscures the author’s use of the n-word.
Throughout the novel, the protagonist, Belton Piedmont, sees and experiences racial injustice, even though Black people were freed three decades earlier at the end of the Civil War. Although they are no longer enslaved, can receive educations, and can hold jobs, the systems and structures in place in the US greatly restrict their lives and force them into a form of neo-slavery. They are physically and verbally abused, lynched for small crimes—or no crime at all—and the institutions that are supposed to protect them, such as the law and voting, have abandoned them.
Although the institution of education is technically available to Black people, it still fails greatly in its task of improving their lives. Through Belton’s journey throughout high school and college, the reader sees the flaws of these institutions. Belton is verbally abused and neglected by Mr. Leonard, the man who is supposed to be educating Black children in the newly formed school. Additionally, the school is a rundown building which was abandoned by the church and considered uninhabited. After graduating college, it becomes clear to Belton that the education system is only the first step in truly educating Black people and improving their lives:
He possessed a first class college education, but that was all. He knew no trade nor was he equipped to enter any of the professions. It is true that there were positions around by the thousands which he could fill, but his color debarred him. He would have made an excellent drummer, salesman, clerk, cashier, government official […] or any thing of such a nature. But the color of his skin shut the doors so tight that he could not even peep (46).
As Belton explains, the newly created education institutions for Black people are woefully insufficient for educating children and preparing young adults for success in the real world. This institutionalized racism serves to keep Black people in a position of minority, preventing them from ever truly attaining equality.
The text also explores the systems of law and justice regarding how they are failing Black people. In Belton’s personal journey, he is thrown from a moving train by a group of angry white men for sitting in first class, forced from a restaurant and arrested for trying to sit at the counter to eat, hanged, shot, and almost killed for sitting in a white section at church. Through it all, the justice systems fail to protect him, each time causing him to be arrested, fined, and—in the last incident —sentenced to death by lynching. In the meeting of the Imperium, both Bernard and Belton discuss the inadequacies of law and justice in their speeches. Bernard states that “colored men are excluded from the jury box; colored lawyers are discriminated against at the bar; and negroes, with the highest legal attainments, are not allowed to even dream of mounting the seat of a judge” (77). Regarding law, Belton explains the problem with the “mob law” that has been allowed to run rampant by angry white men toward Black people, stating that “when lynching once gets started, guilty and innocent alike will suffer, and crimes both great and small will be punished alike” (86). He decries the idea that innocent men of color are regularly lynched, and that law enforcement does nothing to stop the “mob rule” which has taken control in the south. These two institutions—law and justice—should be upholding the newly established law of equality in the United States, but instead are rampant with hate and racial prejudice, forcing Black people into a life of neo-slavery where they can never truly gain equality.
Lastly, the political institution in the US is supposed to offer a way for people to make change and be ruled by their choosing, yet it is so rampant with corruption that true change is made impossible to achieve. When Bernard runs for Congress, he wins by more than 7,000 votes, yet the election board certifies him as the loser. As the narrator explains, the Democrats “determined to forever hold the state government if they had to resort to fraud, […] ballot box stuffing and various other means” (37). These actions will ensure that Black people never get true representation, allowing white people to maintain control of the political institution and, thus, Black peoples’ lives. Without the power to vote in a fair election, Black people have no way to fight back against the injustice they face.
Even though Black people are free at the time of the novel, it is these forms of institutionalized racism that restrict their success and their freedoms. This form of neo-slavery took hold at the end of the Civil War as an effort to stop a true end to slavery and, some would argue, continues into the present day throughout our institutions.
Black Nationalism as a Response to Injustice
In response to the injustices that Belton and Black people face, the novel presents Black nationalism as an answer. Because they are unable to utilize the typical institutions which should better their lives—such as educating or voting—they are forced to look elsewhere for an answer. In the formation of the Imperium in Imperio, Black people take their governing into their own hands, amassing a large following and a large amount of money with which to defend their race and achieve equality.
The novel shows the failure of several institutions, as previously discussed, which should be protecting and defending Black people and allowing them to achieve equality. However, each of these institutions fails Belton throughout the text, continually causing him abuse, job loss, and poverty at the hands of white people and their institutions. At the conclusion of the text, in the meeting of the Imperium, two suggestions are made for how Black people can move forward to achieve racial equality. The first, proposed by Belton, calls for further efforts to convince white society that they are a “New Negro” worthy of equality. If this fails, he proposes all members of the Imperium move to Texas to have a vast majority and take control of the state through voting and legislation. The second, proposed by Bernard, is much more radical, proposing the take over the US Navy to take Texas by force. Although these proposals differ, they are the same in their call for the separation of Black people from white society to form their own, self-governed area that will allow them to grant freedom and equality to all. This idea, called Black nationalism, creates a separate identity and government for Black people in response to the failing institutions found throughout the US, which have abandoned Black people. Although Belton holds out hope for reformation of the US systems, both he and Bernard feel that the only response to a system that has failed them is to create an entirely new system for themselves.
Education as Liberation
Although the institution of education has its problems in the novel, it is still presented as the most important form of advancement and liberation for Black people. Belton and Bernard both attend high school and college and leave with the knowledge necessary to lead the people of the Imperium and strive for racial equality in the US—something that would have been unheard of for Black people just a few decades before.
From the first line of the novel, when Belton’s mother is sending him off to school, the importance of education is made clear. She tells her children that, “Yer mammy is ‘tarmined ter gib yer all de book larning dar is ter be had eben ef she has ter lib on bred” (1). She tells them that, no matter what it costs her, they will attend school to give her opportunities that she never had. As the narrator explains, “a man of tact, intelligence, and superior education moving in the midst of a mass of ignorant people, ofttimes has a sway more absolute than that of monarchs” (2). In other words, at the end of the Civil War, enslaved people were freed but due to years of enslavement, were still “ignorant,” and were easily dismissed by white people as unworthy of equality. However, if Black people like Belton educate themselves, they will be able to use their intelligence and education to convince white people that they are now educated and worthy members of society. Although Belton struggles after his college education to find a job or to use his education, he notes that one of the main reasons is that “the colored people did not have any enterprises in which they could employ him” (46). However, further down the road, with years of education, this would change, as Black people gain the ability to form their own businesses and employ other Black people, just as Belton does when he needs builders for the new building at Cadeville College. Although the system is broken and rampant with racism, the education system is still the first step in building Black people up toward equality and liberation. Additionally, it is the education of Bernard and Belton that allows them to assist so greatly with the Imperium. By recognizing the problems of society and its institutions, they can formulate their own government, newspapers, and even amass wealth for Black people in their struggle for equality. Without education, the liberation that the Imperium promises would be impossible to envision or, eventually, achieve.
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