Scan barcode
christytidwell's review
2.0
Alain Locke's The New Negro provides a valuable look at the Harlem Renaissance, both as an artistic movement that has much in common with the broader modernist movement and as a sociopolitical movement that sees art and self-expression as a way to combat prejudice. The two movements, artistic and social, come together in the New Negro movement or Harlem Renaissance because of their common emphasis on the art itself rather than on the creator or its political ramifications. As Locke writes in "Negro Youth Speaks," "The newer motive, then, in being racial is to be so purely for the sake of art."
Locke argues in the title essay that this generation of artists carries great promise for the healing of American race relationships as the artist "becomes a conscious contributor and lays aside the status of a beneficiary and ward for that of a collaborator and participant in American civilization. The great social gain in this is the releasing of our talented group from the arid fields of controversy and debate to the productive fields of creative expression." Locke argues for a movement away from artistic expression as merely a way to engage with the "Negro problem" or to try to represent the race as a whole; instead, he argues for an approach to art that focuses on individual self-expression. He writes, "for generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being--a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be 'kept down,' or 'in his place,' or 'helped up,' to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden." Writing about the race problem or the race as a whole only perpetuates this problem and "[b]y shedding the old chrysalis of the Negro problem we are achieving something like a spiritual emancipation." More to the point, in a later essay, he writes, "Our poets have now stopped speaking for the Negro--they speak as Negroes."
This carries great promise as an artistic movement and as part of a socio-political movement to emancipate African Americans from the limitations still placed upon them in 1920s America. But it does not solve the problems of American culture for African Americans. And thus I find myself torn regarding this movement. No artist should have to create inferior art in order to address a political issue (which isn't to say that political art is inferior, but that politics forced upon art can diminish its power), but the artists of the movement that Locke documents give too much power to art alone and give short shrift to the very real problems that still face African Americans in the rest of the country. The reality is that these artists are privileged. They live in Harlem and many of them are middle class (either by birth or by virtue of hard work and lucky breaks). In the 1920s, African Americans in the South and in other large cities are not so lucky as these few. Given this reality, the reality in which most African Americans live below the poverty line, suffer the consequences of Jim Crow laws, and live in fear of the Ku Klux Klan or lynchings by their white neighbors should they even be suspected of doing something wrong, the few African Americans who have more power and the means with which to help others really should be helping others. I am not convinced that writing poetry that explores the possibilities of African American self-expression and moves away from race consciousness or stereotypes (though that may be valuable) is the help that is really needed in a time like the one in which the Harlem Renaissance flourished.
I would argue that this artistic movement can play an important role in a larger movement regarding the issue of race, but that this is not enough. It is important to create art that reveals minorities as human and individual and not merely part of a faceless mass, but to create political change the mass has to be acknowledged and mobilized as well.
Locke argues in the title essay that this generation of artists carries great promise for the healing of American race relationships as the artist "becomes a conscious contributor and lays aside the status of a beneficiary and ward for that of a collaborator and participant in American civilization. The great social gain in this is the releasing of our talented group from the arid fields of controversy and debate to the productive fields of creative expression." Locke argues for a movement away from artistic expression as merely a way to engage with the "Negro problem" or to try to represent the race as a whole; instead, he argues for an approach to art that focuses on individual self-expression. He writes, "for generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being--a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be 'kept down,' or 'in his place,' or 'helped up,' to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden." Writing about the race problem or the race as a whole only perpetuates this problem and "[b]y shedding the old chrysalis of the Negro problem we are achieving something like a spiritual emancipation." More to the point, in a later essay, he writes, "Our poets have now stopped speaking for the Negro--they speak as Negroes."
This carries great promise as an artistic movement and as part of a socio-political movement to emancipate African Americans from the limitations still placed upon them in 1920s America. But it does not solve the problems of American culture for African Americans. And thus I find myself torn regarding this movement. No artist should have to create inferior art in order to address a political issue (which isn't to say that political art is inferior, but that politics forced upon art can diminish its power), but the artists of the movement that Locke documents give too much power to art alone and give short shrift to the very real problems that still face African Americans in the rest of the country. The reality is that these artists are privileged. They live in Harlem and many of them are middle class (either by birth or by virtue of hard work and lucky breaks). In the 1920s, African Americans in the South and in other large cities are not so lucky as these few. Given this reality, the reality in which most African Americans live below the poverty line, suffer the consequences of Jim Crow laws, and live in fear of the Ku Klux Klan or lynchings by their white neighbors should they even be suspected of doing something wrong, the few African Americans who have more power and the means with which to help others really should be helping others. I am not convinced that writing poetry that explores the possibilities of African American self-expression and moves away from race consciousness or stereotypes (though that may be valuable) is the help that is really needed in a time like the one in which the Harlem Renaissance flourished.
I would argue that this artistic movement can play an important role in a larger movement regarding the issue of race, but that this is not enough. It is important to create art that reveals minorities as human and individual and not merely part of a faceless mass, but to create political change the mass has to be acknowledged and mobilized as well.
More...