Black Naturalism, White Determinism: Paul Laurence Dunbar's Naturalist Strategies

[...]the issues pursued by the American literary naturalists are wide ranging but include, to cite just a few examples, questions concerning the deterministic pressures of heredity and environmental forces, the theologically challenging implications of materialism and biological reductionism, the emergent issues in race and gender theory invoked by aspects of evolutionary theory, and the ethical complications of social Darwinism. The white perspective notes the suffering blacks experience, but refuses-like Skaggs-to accept any responsibility for that pain. [...]the blows were heavier, faster, now, she was striking at the white world which thrust black people into a walled enclosure from which there was no escape; and at the turn-of-events which had forced her to leave Bub alone while she was working so that he now faced reform school, now had a police record. In "The Mission of Mr. Scatters" in Happy, Scatters uses his knowledge of the logic of white determinism against other African Americans when he is brought to trial for swindling the black citizens of Miltonville out of their money by pandering to white paternalistic belief. Besides the representations of the press in the essay, there are numerous other examples throughout Dunbar's short fiction, including "A Defender of the Faith" in Happy that focuses on a newspaper reporter looking for a local color Christmas Story.