“Backwacking” and Bias

Backwacking, a Plea to the Senator is a fictional text published in 1977 by Ralph Ellison.  Ellison’s text is formatted as a letter from Norm A. Mauler, a white Alabama citizen, to Senator Sunraider. In his letter, Mauler calls for action against “Backwacking” – a physical, seemingly sexual action performed by black males. Mauler condemns this “Backwacking”, stating that it is unGodly, unnatural, and must be stopped immediately by Senator Sunraider. 

Mauler begins his letter by praising Sunraider and then proceeds to describe what he calls “Backwacking”.  Although he never fully says it, Mauler hints that Backwacking is a sexual act through some of the ways he writes about it, such as “when he and his woman reach the climax of this radical new way of sinning” (Ellison 412). Throughout his letter, Mauler guarantees that Sunraider understands Backwacking is both a terrible and entrancing act by either underlining or fully capitalizing unsettling words like “VICTIMIZED”, “HELLBENT”, “UNGODLY”, and “UNATURAL”.  Mauler then tries to force his hateful opinions about Backwacking on Sunraider by writing as if Sunraider already agrees, employing phrases like “as we both well know” and “now you would expect” (Ellison 413). Mauler’s emotional, degrading descriptions of Backwacking and the people involved portray his underlying hatred for black people. This obvious hatred and bias against black people makes it difficult to determine what is true about his description of Backwacking. 

Honestly, this text kind of annoyed me. The way that Mauler essentially just ranted about the same thing for six pages without giving us a detailed description of what Backwacking is made me frustrated. With that being said, I think that Mauler’s intense emotions made the letter compelling because I kept wanting to see what crazy sentence he’d write next. This text reminded me of “Say Yes” by Tobias Wolff because although there was different reasoning, both the husband and Mauler could have had stronger arguments than what they presented.