LITR 5731:
Seminar in American Multicultural Literature: Minority
Sample
Student Research Project
Cindy Goodson
Research Journal
Harlem Renaissance Literature:
Racial Themes,
Interpretations and Art as Propaganda
Contents
Introduction and Premise
Pre-Renaissance Literary Roots
- Paul Laurence Dunbar
- Charles W. Chesnutt
- James Weldon Johnson
Strategic Literary Vehicles
- Pauline Hopkins
- W.E.B. DuBois
- Alain Locke
The Emergence of the Renaissance in Black Literature
- Claude McKay
- Langston Hughes
Conclusion
Harlem is vicious Modernism. BangClash. Vicious the way it's made, Can you stand such beauty. So violent and transforming. - Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)
Introduction and premise
My attraction with Harlem Renaissance literature is fueled by a few sources. First, during the last few years I’ve become rapt in the jazz music of the Harlem Renaissance era. I’ve been a singer for a few decades and a professional recording artist for the past several years and have recently developed an equal interest in literature. Lately, I’ve felt a sense of urgency to seek out my African American literary roots. For in those roots I believe are the riches of spiritual, historical and cultural jewels that are fundamental in the things pertaining to life and more specifically, to my Black life.
Naturally, as a student of music as well as literature for me the two disciplines intersect and I guess it’s in my nature to try to satisfy both appetites. Logically, when I discovered that Dr. White teaches a seminar in American minority literature that covers works from some of the writers during that time and would allow me to focus on individual research of the Harlem Renaissance movement I immediately enrolled in the course. With a fervent adoration for what is also referred to as the New Negro Movement I have plans to focus my attention here throughout my thesis work. This journal is simply a record of my search for common themes and an exploration of various interpretations of the art with regard to its use as propaganda. My aim is to gain a broader perspective on what it meant to be Black and American during that era and how the common themes work in attainment of the American dream or, on the other hand, the alternative Dream as it is for African Americans.
Generally speaking a good way to define the Harlem Renaissance epoch is “the period centered in Harlem during the 1920s-1930s, in which African Americans created great literature, [music], and art. They wrote poetry, prose, plays, and novels. The literature ranged in subject, but race and racial identity was a common theme” (Encarta).
I find myself stumbling when trying to conceptual the phrase ‘living the American Dream.’ What does that mean? I frequently ask people to explain their idea of the dream and whether or not they feel they are living it. Funny how the answers seem to correlate across race and ethnic boundaries, things like “peace of mind,” “building a stable home for family,” “having a nest egg,” “being able to send kids to college,” or perhaps “a savings account with a minimum balance of a million dollars”, all seem to be common vestiges among Americans that try to define their American Dream. I can certainly say that the dreams parallel in many ways regardless of color or cultural backgrounds.
Meanwhile, there is an alternative Dream brewing in the hearts of many of my black interviewees which begs further investigation. They often double back on their answers to the living the dream question with something like, “yeah, but they’re only gonna let a brother/sister get so far”, “we’re still trapped in slavery”, “the playing field has been heavily skewed”, “the white man is holding us down”, bla, bla, bla…., etc.” I could hold an eternal symposium on the “yeah, buts.” The answer to this issue lies in the answers to other questions. Can this issue be resolved? Is there an inclusion of the dreams of African Americans within the American Dream? How did the writers during the Harlem Renaissance express themselves with regard to the attainment of the American Dream? What value is the literature of that era to future ‘Dream’ seekers?
Several sources were examined in my research that include books and websites with narratives or articles by and about authors such as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charles W. Chesnutt, W.E.B. DuBois, Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Pauline Hopkins and James Weldon Johnson.
I begin the quest by asking myself two questions aside from the questions listed above. First, I wanted to know what was on the minds of literary thinkers just after slavery, and I also wondered why Harlem, N.Y. was the chosen location for this burgeoning renaissance. Reflecting on the slave narrative readings during class we learned early on that African Americans were constantly in search of identity and in search of ways to effectively deal with their feelings of anger and frustration about white America. They knew that the only way to gain the freedom, respect and the equal position they deserved was to change the perception that whites had on them. One of the goals of “literary thinkers” as Winston Napier, Professor of English at Clark University, points out was to “counteract traditional European characterization of blacks as less than human” (1).
I asked myself what themes are found in the literature that attempt to persuade the thinking about the humanity of blacks. According to Ralph Ellison:
Race and race-consciousness were constant themes in the literature of the Harlem Renaissance….not true of white literature during the period….during the twenties white writers ignored the race question more than at any other time in American literary history (Ellison 17).
The African American alternative narrative presented here factors in a major setback on the basis of whites ignored the race question. Its one thing to be oppressed by the dominant culture, it’s another thing to be ignored when attempting to address the issue.
In addition, I learned from Wikipedia that “the Great Migration brought in hundreds of thousands of African Americans to cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Detroit,” which is where my father and his siblings later migrated to from the south. In addition, the same source records that:
A transformation was also underway in black social and political thought. In the years immediately following World War I the term “New Negro” had re-surfaced and referenced a class of blacks with education, class, and money and….quickly became the term of choice to describe the spirit of the 1920s among many black Americans (Wikipedia).
In brief, the collective thought among blacks in their response to increased racial tension in the years following Reconstruction was to turn inward and develop attitudes of self-help and racial pride. I found a book by Cary Wintz, titled Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance Wintz, a Professor of History at Texas Southern University which claims, that “large numbers of black Americans had become proud of their race, self-reliant, and assimilated to American middle-class values, and were demanding their rights as American citizens” (Wintz 31). This book served as a great resource for information on my African American literary roots.
Pre-Renaissance Literary Roots – “The Alternative Dream Ignites”
Paul Laurence Dunbar and Charles W. Chesnutt
Cary Wintz’s book provided me with some great information on the literary roots of the Harlem Renaissance and gave me a premise for introducing the alternative dream. I felt that an examination of these two writers would be a great compliment to the journal as it helps me to frame a connection of Pre-Renaissance with Renaissance themes of younger and perhaps more valiant writers. What I found is that the alternative dream of the Renaissance era can be traced to the 1890’s in the work of two Ohio writers Paul Laurence Dunbar and Charles W. Chesnutt. These two men are acknowledged by both black and white critics and were as Wintz asserts known for “…being the most successful black writers before the twentieth century and their work shed interesting illumination on the Harlem Renaissance” (3). Dunbar was born in 1872 in Dayton, Ohio and had hopes early in life of becoming an attorney. He later abandoned that dream for his “higher calling – to interpret my own people through song and story, and to prove to the many that after all we are more human than African” (48). Apparently the alternative Dream for Dunbar was his desire to address what was on the hearts of blacks in hopes of establishing the very basics of their humanity.
My question is how can African American literary thinkers become part of an American Dream system that doesn’t even acknowledge them as true American citizens? Sure it is written in all the appropriate American documents that outline the so-called liberties and justices for all but the fact remained that until white patrons saw blacks like Dunbar as a writer and not as a stereotypical black writer then the literary playing field would remain unequal. White patrons like William Dean Howells, foremost American literary critic gave Dunbar national recognition and though profiting from the help of white benefactors I’m sure he also felt trapped by success it brought which he admits to later. Howells claimed that “Dunbar produced two types of poetry-dialect pieces and those written in Standard English.” Moreover, Howells argued that “it was the dialect poetry that was most praiseworthy, that these poems expressed in true artistic form what passed through the heart and mind of the black race,” and he urged Dunbar to restrict his efforts to this literary form. (Wintz 48)
Dunbar, feeling constrained by this advice as Benjimin Brawley observes, wrote to a friend:
I see now very clearly that Mr. Howells has done me irrevocable harm in the dictum he laid down regarding my dialect verse….I am tired of dialect, but the magazines aren’t. Every time I send them something else, they write back asking for dialect. Nothing wrong with the poems – a Dunbar just has to be dialect, that’s all (Brawley, 60).
Dunbar was being prohibited from defining what a Dunbar poem is and this created a need for an alternative. So what was the alternative? To give the buying readers more of what they wanted and in doing so strategically factoring in the themes that would later inspire the Harlem Renaissance. But during Dunbar’s time the portrayal of blacks in literature was dominated by the “plantation school” of writers, influenced primarily by the work of Thomas Nelson Page, an American author whose work “fostered romantic legends of Southern plantation life” (Britannica). For this reason, without the support of whites blacks would have no voice at all. His frustrations are poetically expressed as Wintz illustrates:
He sang of love when earth was
young,
And Love, itself, was in his
lays,
But ah, the world, it turned to
praise
A jingle in a broken tongue. (qtd. in Wintz 49)
What has become obvious to me at this point is that the black writer confronting the plantation tradition in literature faced a real dilemma and found himself stuck between a rock and a hard place. As Cary Wintz points out, “….he could conform to its vision of black life and, as Dunbar with his dialect poetry, achieve considerable recognition and success; or he could realistically depict the black experience as he perceived it and risk alienating his patrons, his publisher, and his market” (50). Dunbar like many other blacks in his era wanted nothing more than to view himself as first of all a man, then as an American, and only lastly as a Negro. And as one argued, “Dunbar’s racial naiveté blinded him to social reality and hypnotized him into believing that he was simply a man, though the rest of the world saw him as a black” (qtd in Wintz 50).
For the same reason, some argued that the dialect pieces merely reinforced negative racial stereotypes and hence did all blacks a disservice. James Weldon Johnson, who was the first African American to pass the bar exam in Florida, as well as the 1920 General Secretary to the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was especially sensitive to the dangers of dialect poetry, which he maintained was:
….a very limited artistic form…typified by its exaggerated geniality, childish optimism, forced comicality, and mawkish sentiment,….and…limited as an instrument of expression to but two emotions, pathos and humor, thereby making every poem either only sad or only funny (Wintz 159).
Johnson also found some good in Dunbar’s dialect poetry, he claimed that “at their best they capture a sense of vitality and energy; at their worst they mask the black experience with a comic superficiality” (Wintz 160). This selection from “The Party” illustrates well the appeal and the problems of Dunbar’s dialect poetry:
Dey had a gread big pahty
Down to Tom’s de othah
night;
Was I dah? You bet! I nevah
in my lefe see sich a sight;
. . . . .
Evahbody dressed in deir fines’
Heish yo’ mouf an’ git
away,
Ain’t seen no sich such fancy dressin’
Sence las’ quah’tly meetin’
day;
. . . . .
Well, we eat and drunk ouah
po’tion, ’twell dah wasn’t
nothin’ lef’
An’ we felt jes’ like new sausage,
we was mos’ nigh stuffed to
def!
Tom, he knowed how we’d be
feelin’, so he had de fiddlah
’roun’,
An’ he made us cleah de cabin
fu’ to dance dat suppah
down. (Wintz 60)
This poem obviously meant to be read aloud, possesses strength and vitality and its images of life are vivid. It’s a good illustration of a black experience and I like the way it ties into my quest for themes of the alternative Dream. This sonnet is a good depiction of black dialect literature and it unfolds into what was probably a real experience among blacks during his life time. The problem I have is that Dunbar died probably feeling unfulfilled that he had never crossed that plateau of exposing his true literary resourcefulness. But rather, bitterly having to resort to the alternative way of writing in a way that Howells and others positioned as ‘Dunbar poetry’. Although, Dunbar died before the First World War, he in a number of ways anticipated and was an antecedent to the Harlem Renaissance.
Meanwhile, Cary Wintz informs us that “Dunbar had a contemporary and major rival as the foremost early black writer who was one of the first blacks to be published in a national magazine” (55). Charles W. Chesnutt, like Dunbar was born in Ohio, but grew up in North Carolina then later returned to Cleveland at twenty-four years old. According to Wintz, “Chesnutt earned a substantial salary as a court reporter and therefore, unlike Dunbar who never had to rely on his literary income for a living…This…offered him greater literary freedom and enabled him to emphasize themes that Dunbar tended to avoid” (55). This is essential for me because it differentiates between having the freedom to explore one’s writing versus the confinement of the dominant culture’s oppressive constructs within the literary world.
Subsequently, I asked myself what did Chesnutt do with his literary freedoms that were different from what Dunbar did within his confinements. Wintz claims that, “While Dunbar anticipated the Harlem Renaissance through his New York connections and the setting of his last novel; Chesnutt anticipated it by his uncompromising focus on racial themes” (55). Chesnutt skillfully and subtly wove a delicate pattern of racism and the inhumanity of slavery through his stories. Avoiding the overly stereotyped clash between the cruel master and the rebellious slave, Chesnutt captured the true injustice of slavery by illustrating the suffering experienced by good slaves at the hands of well-intentioned and humane masters.
In the story “Po’ Sandy,” Chesnutt developed this theme by chronicling the tragic fate of the best slave on “Mars Marrobo’s” plantation. “Sandy was a good worker; in fact Mr. Marrobo’s children frequently borrowed him to help out on their plantations. Once while Sandy was away from home, Marrobo sold his wife to a slave trader. Repentant for this, Marrobo gave Sandy a dollar and:
‘….lowed he wuz monst’us sorry fer to break up de fambly, but de spekilater had gin ‘im big boot, en times wuz hard en money skaese, en so he wuz bleedst to make de trade’” (Wintz 56).
The story unfolds with Sandy recovering from his loss and eventually remarrying, but he lived in constant fear that he would return one day and find that his new wife had been traded away. “His new wife, though, was a conjure woman who used her magic to turn Sandy into a tree so that he could remain on the plantation, but even this rather extreme attempt to find security in slavery ended in tragedy for both Sandy and his wife” (Wintz 56). I find that through tales like this one Chestnutt strategically makes his point that slavery was degrading and cruel – a point directly counter to his contemporaries’ representation of the fond reminiscences of the antebellum slave’s happy, carefree life. In sum, this example serves as an African American alternative demonstration of racial-consciousness.
‘Passing’ and the alternative Dream – Langston Hughes
Satisfied with the lesson on the literary roots, the next theme I explored that was a plentiful one during the Harlem Renaissance was the subject of ‘passing’. Since we had class discussions on miscegenation as a theme of the alternative ‘Dream’ I chose to include some discourse it. In 1933 and well into the Harlem Renaissance era Langston Hughes contributed a very significant writing on the subject of ‘passing’. In his short story entitled Passing he illustrates what I consider to be a prize in my journal research. Usually, when I’ve read narratives regarding ‘passing’ the protagonist is typically a black female passing for white however; Hughes brilliantly uses a black male as the passer. The alternative dream is prevalent and stirs in this piece as the main character Jack writes his black mother a letter acquiescently surrendering to his newly found white life but as a black man. Out of three children he is the only one who could pass for white and Hughes writes:
Dear Ma, I felt like a dog, passing you downtown last night and not speaking to you…..I’m not scared as I used to be about somebody taking me for colored any more just because I’m seen talking….to a Negro. I guess in looks I’m sort of suspect-proof, anyway. You remember what a hard time I used to have in school trying to convince teachers I was really colored…. I’ve begun to pass for white…Ma…and it was mighty generous of you to urge me to go ahead and make us of my light skin and good hair. It got me this job, Ma, where I still get $65 a week in spite of the depression…..and I’m in line for a promotion (Hughes 50).
Additionally, Jack goes on to explain to his mother that he’s moving right on up that corporate ladder passing for someone that he’s not but it’s probably his only means of ever coming close to the American Dream in its alternative meaning. Alternative because it becomes a direct and harsh insult to the African American race and a slap in the face especially to those left behind with their dark skin. Jack excitedly details the plans he and his white girlfriend whose folks are German-American have for marriage and in living happily ever after. Hughes displays the ‘Dream’ fulfillment by way of the alternative device of ‘passing’ ironically, people are living in the alternative dream every day. Jack confirms his success of being able to live outside of color lines by writing his mother:
Since I’ve made up my mind to live in the white world, and have found my place in it (a good place), why think about race any more? I’m glad I don’t have to….But now I’m glad you backed me up, and told me to go ahead and get all I could out of life….Ma…I’m going to marry white and live white, and if any of my kids are born dark I’ll swear they aren’t mine. I won’t get caught in the mire of color again. I’m free, Ma, free!
Although Hughes and the other authors cited so far were able to depict a number of themes in their writing, including the subject of ‘passing’ one common problem seems to overshadow racial-consciousness. There was absolute proof of the inability of both northern liberals as well as southern aristocrats to stem the tide of racial prejudice that had become an integral part of southern life and politics.
Intersecting Art and Civil Rights (art as propaganda or self expression)
W.E.B. DuBois and Claude McKay
So how would they attain the American Dream or the alternative Dream through the arts? Art as propaganda was positioned as theme and I set out to find literature that established a criterion for art as it relates to affecting the onward movement toward that dream. Carol Bunch, former literature student at UHCL in her thesis offers an introduction using a quote by one of the country’s most distinguished educators W.E.B. DuBois, which asks, “When the artist, black or white, portrays Negro characters is he under any obligation or limitations as to the sort of character he will portray?” (qtd. in Bunch 2). What Bunch illustrated was the debate over whether or not writers were obligated to portray their Black characters in a specific way in an attempt to further the civil rights agendas of organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Two schools of thought prevailed among the artists, writers, critics, and scholars of the Harlem Renaissance. Bunch argues that “One faction…..maintained that art was the means to change society in order to be accepted into it; the other saw art as politics by other means—civil rights between covers or from a stage or easel—but as an expression of the intrinsic conditions most men and women of African descent were experiencing” (2). For the same reason, DuBois and many of the intellectuals, creative writers, and artists of the Harlem Renaissance saw as one of the purposes of the black arts movement the creation of more positive images of African Americans than had generally existed in American culture before the 1920s.
DuBois’s position directly attributes to the alternative ‘Dream’ ideology in hopes that using art as propaganda would generate a more positive image for blacks and in turn create more synergistic opportunities for blacks to have as equal a playing field as whites.
From a much lighter political perspective Claude McKay’s life was more deeply immersed in the universe of the Lost Generation. David Levering Lewis’s When Harlem was in Vogue turned out to out to be one of my favorite sources of information on McKay the reading was energetic and colorful. According to Lewis; McKay was a “deeply troubled escapist…In… contempt for propagandist literature and disdain for literary politics, …and dogged struggles simply to be themselves tested the outermost limits of what was possible for persons of African ancestry dedicated to the creative life” (50). McKay who was a Jamaican, unlike DuBois, Hughes, Chesnutt and Dunbar was still affectionately connected to the idea that Great Britain cared for him. He wanted to be able to get back to that love after his experience with the cruel duality of being in but not of two cultures a common theme being experienced among blacks in Harlem, USA.
Lewis purports that “to most whites he [McKay] was just another black man in Harlem writing poetry. But McKay finding himself estranged from Afro-Americans…so he traveled back there only…the Brits had no sense of connection with him” (Lewis 52). McKay’s poem Old England resounds of his naiveté for the Mother Country’s affection:
I’ve a longin’ in me dept’s of hear dat I can
conquer not
Tis a wish dat I’ve been havin’ from since I could
form a t’o’t,
Just to view de homeland England, in de streets
of London walk….. (Lewis 52)
He discovered quickly that the average Briton had not the remotest idea that he even existed and they shared at least a common culture of school and court, let alone any notion of equality between them.
McKay later became a Marxist and there was no more talk of Homeland England for him. Further reading in Lewis’s Vogue revealed that “McKay was wrecked with hatred for England and he came back to America to become among all black poets,…par excellence the poet of hate” (52). The alternative ‘Dream’ contribution from McKay’s perspective posits a more dynamic one than those I’ve covered already. When it came to the Negro problem, McKay found that his Marxist collaborators inclined to be more conventional. In other words, in the midst of obvious racial discrimination the white Marxist friends would admonish blacks to take the back (alternative) seat. They wouldn’t have equal treatment but at least there was treatment. In my opinion, the dominant culture meant to oppress minorities and try to make them think they liked it.
Lewis illustrated how McKay wrote about the incident seventeen years later in a play….He Who Gets Slapped, and how it still rankled within him:
Poor, painful black face, intruding into the holy places of the whites. How like a spectator you haunt the pale devils! Always at their elbow, always darkly peering through the window, giving them no peace, no rest….Damn it all! Goodnight, plays and players. The prison is vast, there is plenty of space and little time to sing and dance and laugh and love. There is little time to dream of the jungle… (qtd. in Lewis 54)
What I’ve been able to assess this far in my quest is that the deepest challenge in many respects for renaissance artists lay in the poisoned intellectual and cultural climate of ideas in the United States concerning the origins, abilities, and potential of people of African descent. For instance, for generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being – as Alain Locke, author of The New Negro purports,
…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 (Locke 3).
During the time The New Negro was published life for the American Negro was undergoing an extreme makeover and the younger generation was vibrant with a new psychology; Locke wrote:
“the new spirit that was awakened in the masses and under the very eyes of the professional observers transforming what had been a perennial problem into the progressive phases of contemporary Negro life” (4).
The idea of a ‘new spirit’ suggests an alternative to the old or dominant spirit and is fundamental to the enterprise of the African American literary world.
Strategic Literary Vehicles – Positioning the Literature to Demonstrate Equality
Pauline Hopkins and W.E.B. DuBois
Undeniably the use of art as self-expression has its rewards and set-backs. It lends itself to a higher level of self-respect for blacks. The time came once again when literature was to be used as a strategic vehicle and there was an attempt to accomplish this that was initiated by Pauline Hopkins. The art of literature would be used for the greater good; upward and forward progression for the African American. And Pauline Hopkins, editor of Colored American Magazine (1900) maintained that:
If African Americans were to ever fulfill the dream of redesigning itself then it would have to be accomplished by undoing the psycho-cultural injury caused by racism (Napier 1).
The method for carrying out that task would be through what Hopkins called the ‘strategic nurturing’ of black writers. She held that in order to even entertain the notion of equality for blacks they would first have to undergo psycho-cultural rehabilitation for the damage caused by racism.
The tactics they would incorporate would foster a rebuilding a confidence within themselves which had been stripped during their exit from the legal slavery system and they would have to find a way to believe in their ability to have a voice. They framed this tactic by way of systematic portrayal of their innermost thoughts and concerns. Pauline Hopkins declared, “…we must ourselves develop the men and women who will faithfully portray the inmost thoughts and feelings of the Negro” (qtd. in Napier 1). Her position here implies that a first step for the Negro’s attainment of the Dream would be through true self-expression. Hopkins’s functional aesthetics complemented W.E.B. Dois’s concern with the self-promotional value of black literature.
DuBois, initially spoke these words at a celebration for the recipient of the Twelfth Spingarn Metal which was awarded to Carter Godwin Woodson in 1926 and wrote it in his Criteria of Negro Art (1926):
….some in this audience ...are…disturbed at the subject of this meeting…people are thinking…like this: ‘How…an organization like this, a group of radicals trying to bring new things into to the world, a fighting organization which has come up out of the blood and dust of battle, struggling for the right of black men to be ordinary human beings – how is that an organization of this kind can turn aside to talk about Art? After all, what have we who are slaves and black to do with Art?’ Or perhaps there are others…who…are saying, ‘After all it is rather satisfactory after all this talk about rights and fighting to sit and dream of something which leaves a nice taste in the mouth. (qtd. in Napier 1).
My first look at this passage made me think that the alternative dream message for blacks implies just the act of dreaming but not necessarily applying any action thereafter. That literature and art would serve only as a means of imaginative psychological escape to exert frustrations and fulfill a need to be creative. However, as I read on I learned that Du Bois, like Hopkins had plans to use this surge of intellectual writing as a strategic literary vehicle.
Equally important, is that Du Bois used his position as editor of Crisis magazine to disseminate aesthetic proclamations on the value of literature as a source of political education and cultural celebration. He dynamically and eloquently addresses the group reminding them of accomplishments and admonishing them to continue in forward and upward mobility - fighting the good fight.
I investigate further and learn neither of two groups he mentions above has the right reason for the purpose of his speech. He continues with…
Let me tell you that neither of these groups is right. The thing we are talking about tonight is part of the great fight we are carrying on and it represents a forward and upward look – a pushing onward.
DuBois is demonstrating themes that directly correlate with the alternative narrative or alternative ‘Dream’. He’s preparing and positioning his audience for the age emphasizing not immediate individual success as with the American Dream, but rather "the Dream" in the alternative fashion which factors in the need to rise again, and a quest for group dignity.
Indeed I was glad to see that the tough questions were being asked by such an audacious leader as DuBois. He was like a gadfly able to stir up African Americans and really get them thinking. According to Winston Napier he asks the audience the following questions:
What do we want? What is the thing we after? We want to be Americans, full-fledged Americans, with all the rights of other American citizens. But is that all? Do we want simply to be Americans? Once in a while through all of us there flashes some clairvoyance….of what America really is. And seeing our country thus, are we satisfied with its present goals and ideals (qtd. in Napier 17)?
This has to be one of the best examples I’ve used to exhibit race-consciousness. Why would African Americans want full-fledged citizenship without having a voice to make the necessary changes toward equal rights?
In short, DuBois equates the experience of black America with striving to create a singular consciousness out of an identity made up of dual perspectives. DuBois writes that “One ever feels his two-ness…two warring ideals in one dark body” (qtd. in Helbling 31). His example demonstrates fully an alternative theme that keeps members of the black race in a sort of quagmire.
Conclusion:
In the process of developing this journal I realized early on that it would be impractical to think I’d even scratch the surface of such an expansive topic. However, I feel very positive about finding some of the essentials I was looking for. I’ve learned much about the Harlem Renaissance but, so many questions go unanswered and I believe the best conclusion for the unanswered questions is to just keep asking and enjoy the ride while learning.
In brief, what I’ve learned about the ‘Dream’ whether in its American description or as the alternative edition, is that it is an ever lasting fantasy on every side. Minority groups and particularly the African American group as well as individuals that have decided to endeavor to attain the dominant culture’s status will experience denunciation at some level. There is an inevitable spirit within the DNA of our country’s constructs that naturally resist any species that would threaten its ultimate dominance.
As for the alternative narrative, I use the term narrative here rather than Dream because in its art form it is used for propaganda. From The Slave Narratives, to the Harlem Renaissance literature, and all the way to Dr. King’s Dream speech all offer continuing storylines that chronicle the upward and forward mobility of the black race in its search for what can all be summed up as peace.
