JACKSON 1

Michael W. Jackson

A02-92-6779

Warren 11A

23 November 1999

Harlem Renaissance:
White Society's Creation

The period of time from the end of World War One to the Great Depression has

been characterized as an awakening within Black America. This movement has been

given the name the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance is controversial and it

has produced varied viewpoints on its significance, but one observation is clear; the

Harlem Renaissance was a time period of great involvement within the Black

communities of the United States in the arts unprecedented to this date. The source of

this involvement brings about a dilemma in the overall significance of the movement for

black awareness as it unmasks the true motivator of the movement, white society. The

Harlem Renaissance was not a great black movement but rather a movement by white

society to exploit stereotypical black culture. The focus of this exploitation was

primitivism of a race to substantiate the supremacy of whites.

The sensationalism surrounding the development of the black voice lies in the

environment that fostered its development. The region typically associated with this

awakening is Harlem and it was a different type of cradle than the roots of other

movements have enjoyed. It had a helpful yet detrimental effect on the objectives of the

movement. A description of Harlem citing James Weldon Johnson,

Harlem is not merely a Negro colony or community, it is a city within a city, the greatest Negro
city in the world. It is not a slum or a fringe, it is located in the heart of Manhattan and occupies
one of the most beautiful and healthful sections of the city. It is not a “quarter” of dilapidated
tenements, but is made up of new-law apartments and handsome dwellings, with well-paved and
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well-lighted streets. It has its own churches, social and civic centers, shops, theaters, and other
places of amusement. And it contains more Negroes to the square mile than any other spot on
earth (Singh 8).

The environment captured in Harlem was the driving force behind the movement as its

economic wealth allowed writers to write. The cost of this freedom was that with this

wealth you must write what will reap the greatest profit. It was not what was in Harlem

that produced its literature and Art but what came to Harlem that created the voice of the

Black person. The members of the literary circle in Harlem, Hughes, Locke, Cullen, and

McKay to name a few, were all products of the Renaissance or a move towards Black

awareness. The passion of the period, however, was slanted with relation to the purpose

of the writers and the backers of their cause. The movement is classically associated with

White assistance in publishing literature and determining the subject matter to sell in

White society. Here arises a controversy and a paradox of the Renaissance period. Is the

period of Black voice in a move to identify self or a voice created by White society to

make a profit? Carl Van Vechten exemplifies this controversy in Nigger Heaven, where

he uses a stereotypical Black person in a criminal environment and as vagrant in society

to portray the classic opinion among Whites of the Blacks. The transition of the literature

to an emphasis on the sexual passion within Blacks to the animalistic nature of their

society was an immediate draw to White society. One observer put it, "by 1920 the

Negro had become a white New Yorker's pastime"(Kramer 83). This new style of

writing to a specific audience thoroughly crushed the self-actualization movement of the

Renaissance period. The new passion of the publisher to seize the almighty dollar called

for an end to black reality of a middle class of Blacks and placed an entire group of

people into a stereotype that would sell a novel. “ Nigger Heaven made many Black

writers keenly aware of the commercial possibilities of the primitivistic formula, and
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made it more difficult for the Harlem Renaissance to develop into a black literary

movement (Coleman 97).” The newfound way to line one’s pockets with cash ended the

hope of a true didactic experience from the Harlem creation.

The primitivism inherent in black literature of the time is not reserved to Nigger

Heaven but is present in such works as Invisible Man and Emperor Jones. These

examples of the beast-like black man have profound effect on white society and their

hope to remain superior to black society. In Ellison's Invisible Man, Jim Trueblood is a

black sharecropper who has impregnated his child as a result of a dream. The nature of

this scenario is that the black man is of such meager intelligence that he feels that if he

does not move once he wakes up it will not be a sin. Trueblood feels that if he does not

enjoy this terrible act once he is awake he would have only violated his child during a

dream and not as a conscious person. A direct quote from the novel that portrays white

society as the savior of the savage is "But what I don't understand is how I done the

worse thing a man can do in his own family and 'stead of things gittin' bad, they got

better. The nigguhs up at the school don't like me, but the white folks treat me fine"

(Ellison 68). White society does not condemn this man, as his superior, but delivers

relief to a man they feel is animalistic in nature. Through this example it is observed that

white society feels a need to aid the incompetent black man who is unable to account for

his actions. A second significant portrayal of Black primitivism is seen in the Eugene

O'Neil play Emperor Jones. The reader observes a black man fall from a white man's

position back to his native self. Emperor Jones has fled to an island where he has taken

the role of a white man ruling over the natives in his belief that they are savages. As the

play progresses Emperor Jones is slowly transformed back to his primitive state as he
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confronts the ghosts of his past. This scenario depicts White society's necessity to show

that Blacks will never be able to maintain a level equal to that of a white man and that the

only possible outcome will be a Black's return to his animal self. These works portray

the sensationalism surrounding the primitive nature of black society and as these works

received great acclaim they further substantiate the claim of White influence in the

Renaissance period.

The Harlem Renaissance period may have been an attempt at a great movement

but it is evident that the problem remains that black society was not the leader of this

movement but a mere vehicle for the production of sensual writing and economic

opportunity of the white community. The Renaissance asked to be a period of black

acceptance within a society but was the product of a White dominated literary world and

an overall sympathy for Black plight. The creations from this time period fed a certain

audience and were the product of a mold. The desire for “Harlem gin” and a desire for

profit replaced the passion of a people and their movement for a definition of self. The

products of the time period are stereotypical and are a clear representation of a society

that wishes to view Blacks as primitive animals who make love wildly and are carefree,

an opposite to the White purity and morality that is widely accepted.

The Harlem Renaissance was a movement that placed an invaluable amount of

Black Art into the history of the world. This period was the driving force in many of

today’s Black writers and it is clear that the motivation has remained unchanged in

society today as the public embraces works such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The Black

society is an entity that must be purely black to gain its voice and its passion. The White

influence during the Harlem period severely injured the voice of a people in order to fit a
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fad that lasted as long as there was money to waste on the Negro. The movement today,

counter to the time of the Renaissance is captured in Black Entertainment Television

where an all black executive board and an all black company help aid Black America

gain a voice in society, to insure the progressive equalization of America. The Harlem

Renaissance, a movement focused on black culture, was not a discovery of a black voice

but a desire of white society to gain economic benefits from an emancipated people. The

black writer both thrived and suffered, torn between well-meant encouragement from the

white race to preserve his racial identity (usually described as "primitivism") and a

misguided encouragement from his own race to emulate the white one (Kramer 121).
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Works Cited & Consulted

Coleman, Leon. Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Garland

Publishing, Inc, 1998.

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Vintage International, 1995.

Kramer, Victor A. Harlem Renaissance Re-Examined. New York: The Whitston

Publishing Company, 1997.

Singh, Amritjit. The Novels of the Harlem Renaissance. University Park: Pennsylvania

State University Press, 1976.

Wintz, Cary D. Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance. College Station: Texas A&M

University Press, 1996.