Black No More's aspects of science fiction regarding the sanitarium, and the issues it tackles regarding race relations and depictions of issues people of color face, put the novel under the umbrella of Afrofuturism. Black No More is one of the first novels written in this genre defined by the term coined by Mark Dery 60 years later.[2] The novel's use of technology literally through the sanitarium, and more abstractly through its satirical languages to create an alternate social reality are Afrofuturistic in their presentation. Black No More was published the same year, 1931, as his novel about forced labor and Americo-Liberian relations with indigenous tribes Slavery Today; A Liberian Story. As an Afrofuturistic work, the novel satirically showcases the racial impacts of assimilation, along with satirizing a potential future, in which the Jim Crow era policies would have been buried through eugenic assimilation.[3] The novel begins with a satirical dedication to those who claim to lack any African American genes, whilst also detailing a Japanese procedure which claims to have the capability of lightening skin, contextualizing the alternate social reality through the inevitability of racial mixing as a product of being human. Such dedications are included as forms of satire to mock the concepts of "race changing," but also to inform the reader of the absurdist style of the work's rooting in reality.
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