So, what’s your type? A fairly common question in the world of relationships and dating. A question that is usually answered by criteria of height, personality, aspirations...or maybe the old cliché of tall, dark and handsome. While the latter response could easily refer to a 6-foot tall brunet with an affinity for Sally Hansen, in the case of Sam Selvon’s Lonely Londoners, the “dark” element is firmly reserved for race. In fact, the requirements of tall and handsome are basically irrelevant.
Hyde Park acts as a sexual hub of sorts within the novel; a place where the not everything is black and white, but the people are. Moses, a frequent visitor of Hyde Park, ponders upon ‘how this sort of thing happening in a place where only the high and the mighty is’, but he recognises the fact that ‘with all of that they feel they can’t get big thrills unless they have a black man in the company’. Moses’ statement rightfully implies that it isn’t a deep, emotional connection that unites the two races, but rather a sexual desire from the white participants to feel a sense of thrill and danger. After all, if it was a relationship that these people were searching for, they certainly wouldn’t be looking for it in Poet’s Corner with a purse-full of money.
Moses is acutely aware throughout the course of his sexual exploits that the white participants are purely interested in the colour of his skin, along with the stereotypes invoked by that colour. He notes that ‘you can’t put on any English accent for them [...] or try to be polite and civilize they don’t want that sort of thing at all they want you to live up to the films and stories they hear about [...] the cruder you are the more they like you the whole blasted set of them’. Moses’ frustration encapsulates the difficulties raised by the fetishization of white people for black culture. Patrick Herald details the violent incident between the Jamaican man and the white woman from the art exhibit, describing the white woman’s expectations of the ‘radicalized fantasy of blackness as signifying an uncivilised, savage sexuality’. The true conflict of this situation arises when the Jamaican becomes aware of the nature of the woman’s infatuation, and reacts violently. The juxtaposition between the woman’s fantasy of a dangerous, uncivilised black man and the reality of the Jamaican’s violence towards the woman clarifies the role of black people within that society. Although the novel takes place long after slavery was abolished, white power clearly still exists, albeit in an adjusted state. Herald notes that the Jamaican man’s anger stems from ‘his realization that he is operating as a mere placeholder in this woman’s fantasy, an object’. This dehumanisation of the black body is reminiscent of the role of black slaves in which their thoughts, feelings and wellbeing of are seen as irrelevant, and the only purpose they serve is to satisfy the needs of their owners. In this manner, although the black characters in Lonely Londoners have substantially more agency over their lives, in the eyes of the white characters they now serve to fulfil their sexual fantasies.
This isn’t to say that the black characters in the novel don’t fetishize the white body in return. The use of derogatory slang by the Caribbean men to describe white women as ‘skin’ and ‘white pussy’ exposes how they too can fetishize the white body and reduce the whole to its physical parts. However, it can be viewed that this use of language is a means for the black men to reclaim the sense of power and masculinity that has been taken from them; a miniscule bargaining chip that pales in comparison to the freedom and autonomy that they wish to hold over their bodies and sexuality.