Knights of Nordica

The order functions as a social club, a political machine, and a business, selling uniforms and membership to men who want to feel like defenders of a race they can no longer reliably identify. Its halls host labor meetings, its news service manufactures outrage, and its rank and file include the very people it claims to exclude. As the whitening process erases the visible Negro, the Knights must invent new enemies or admit that their entire purpose has evaporated — a dilemma that drives the novel's satire of American bigotry to its logical absurdity.