Compare and Contrast

In Chicago's New Negroes, Davarian L. Baldwin provides a different interpretation of the New Negro. He argues, "the term 'New Negro' is associated with the literary and visual artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance" (5), which is similar to the work of Alain Locke's The New Negro. Despite the scholarship of the New Negro that focuses on the Negro artist and intellectual, Baldwin forms a different interpretation of the New Negro. In his introduction chapter he states that he "examines the mass consumer market as a crucial site of intellectual life" (5). Therefore, Baldwin's interpretation of New Negro differs from that of Locke. He offers that there needs to be an exploration of the relationship between consumer culture and the black intellectual.

According to Baldwin the first New Negro was American heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson. Baldwin choosing Jack Johnson as the embodiment of the New Negro, challenges the general belief that the New Negro was an artist (writer, painter, poet, intellectual etc.). Subsequently, he creates a new narrative of the New Negro, as the non-elite being the embodiment of the New Negro, not a talented tenth, artists, writers, and intellectuals. This is vastly different from the Alain Locke text. In fact, Baldwin contests that narrative by offering that artists and intellectuals were more like mirrors reflecting the change consciousness rather than creating it.

Nonetheless, there are similarities between Locke’s The New Negro and Baldwin’s Chicago’s New Negroes. Baldwin makes use of Reverend Reverdy Ranson statement “What Jack Johnson seeks to do to Jeffries in the roped area will be more the ambition of negroes in every domain of human endeavor”, which demonstrates that the New Negro spirit resonates in both a figure like Jack Johnson as well as the Negro artist. In addition, both the artist and fighter share the commonality of undermining white hegemony. Similarly, both figures destroy racial hierarchies. In closing, the entrepreneur, the boxer, the writer, the painter, and the intellectual all embody the idea of being free of white control and being free internally and mentally.

Bitter Sweet Home

This was the culture
from which I sprang.
This was the terror
from which I fled.
-Richard Wright,
        Black Boy
    To introduce Part Two: Beginnings, in The Warmth of Other Suns Isabel Wilkerson develops a framework for the section by using a passage from Richard Wright’s book, Black Boy. In essence, this passage illuminates the spirit and mindset of the New Negro. It shows the ways the culture from the South was embedded within the African American experience but also the hardships of being an African American in the South. It complicates the narrative of the New Negro by illustrating the conflict of having the strong desire to leave the South but also coming to an understanding of parting ties with a place that has shaped their identity. To African Americans the South symbolized a bitter sweet home, in which they were not welcomed but had built an identity and culture in. Richard Wright dwells into this concept in depth, in the following poem.
    I was leaving the South
    To fling myself into the unknown....
    I was taking a part of the South
    To transplant in alien soil,
    To see if it could drink of new and cool rains,
    Bend in strange winds,
    Respond to the warmth of other suns
    And, perhaps, to bloom.
This poem, exemplifies the mindset and spirit of the New Negro. It explains how the New Negro attempted to take the culture from the South and plant it into a new environment (the North). Thus, the New Negro hoped by taking the culture from the South and planting it into the North, the conditions of their life may become better. While this demonstrates the Great Migration as fleeing oppression and economic disparity, it also adds in the element of a New Negro attitude. To best describe the New Negro and it’s relation to The Warmth of Other Suns, it is imperative to evaluate the essay of Alain Locke “The New Negro”.
    Alain Locke establishes the formation of the New Negro and challenging the notion of the Old Negro. He discusses how the Old Negro has been reduced to an object, a subject, and an issue for debate. Moreover, Locke states, “the mind of the Negro seems suddenly to have slipped from under the tyranny of social intimidation and to be shaking off the psychology of imitation and implied inferiority” which explains the ways in which African Americans had become psychologically oppressed. He expresses the shift from the Old Negro to the new Negro. The New Negro rejected stereotypical figures such as the Uncle Tom, Sambo, and Mammie. The New Negro possessed a new attitude and new spirit, that embraced the possibility for change. Locke concurs that, “the northern city centers is to be explained primarily in terms of a new vision of opportunity, of social and economic freedom”, exemplifying the nature of the Great Migration. The New Negro symbolized frustration, resistance, courage, and a vision for new possibilities. Although an inner conflict resonated in African Americans and their decision to leave the South and their origins, an understanding that they would keep their culture shaped by the South and place it in a better environment (the North) seemed to have been a common theme.

Self Assessment

List of Black Studies course that deeply influenced my perspective:

• Black Studies 4 Critical Intro to Race

• Black Studies 15 Psychology of Blacks

• Black Studies 38B African American Literature

• Black Studies 103 Politics of Black Liberation

• Black Studies 106 Women Politics of the Body

• Black Studies 133 Gender and Sexuality

    Entering into the University of California Santa Barbara, I had a monolithic way of looking at the world. All I knew about Black History and racial politics were the mainstream basics: Slavery, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and the Civil Rights Movement. Also, I had come to accept that although I knew that as an African American woman I had to work harder than my white counterpart I held the idea that racial equality had been achieved post-civil rights movement. UCSB’s Black Studies Department is exceptional, and has influenced my perspective significantly. The general Black Studies courses that I have taken examined the ways in which racism is constructed and embedded within systematic structures of oppression. Before taking Black Studies courses I was not aware of the impact of race in poverty, employment, education, media representation, public policies, and so on.
    Being a double major in Black Studies and Sociology with a minor in Feminist Studies, I’ve gained a lot of perspective from Black Studies 133 Gender and Sexuality. Generally, Black Studies courses and racial politics have the tendency to center race in discussion of racial politics, without providing a critical gender critique. Thus, rendering the Black womens' experiences invisible. Black Studies 133 influenced my perspective by providing an intersectional analysis that examined different identities along with race, such as gender, class, and sexuality. The Black Studies courses that I have taken thus far, have provided me with a historical context to the plight of African Americans and exposed me different fields in which African Americans are examined. In addition, they have given me the tools to think and analyze critically.