{"id":1681,"date":"2019-08-01T08:57:29","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T08:57:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/?page_id=1681"},"modified":"2019-08-01T08:57:29","modified_gmt":"2019-08-01T08:57:29","slug":"alain-locke-on-the-new-negro-1925","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/22-the-new-era\/alain-locke-on-the-new-negro-1925\/","title":{"rendered":"Alain Locke on the \u201cNew Negro\u201d (1925)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alain Locke, a leading figure of the Harlem\nRenaissance, was a distinguished academic\u2014the first African American Rhodes\nScholar, he obtained a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard\u2014who taught at Howard\nUniversity for 35 years. In 1925, he published an essay, \u201cEnter the New Negro,\u201d\nthat described an African American population busy seeing \u201ca new vision of\nopportunity.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the last decade\nsomething beyond the watch and guard of statistics has happened in the life of\nthe American Negro and the three norns [goddesses of Norse mythology] who have\ntraditionally presided over the Negro problem have a changeling in their laps.\nThe Sociologist, The Philanthropist, the Race-leader are not unaware of the New\nNegro but they are at a loss to account for him. He simply cannot be swathed in\ntheir formulae. For the younger generation is vibrant with a new psychology;\nthe new spirit is awake in the masses, and under the very eyes of the\nprofessional observers is transforming what has been a perennial problem into\nthe progressive phases of contemporary Negro life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Could such a\nmetamorphosis have taken place as suddenly as it has appeared to? The answer is\nno; not because the New Negro is not here, but because the Old Negro had long\nbecome more of a myth than a man. The Old Negro, we must remember, was a\ncreature of moral debate and historical controversy. His has been a stock\nfigure perpetuated as an historical fiction partly in innocent sentimentalism,\npartly in deliberate reactionism. The Negro himself has contributed his share\nto this through a sort of protective social mimicry forced upon him by the adverse\ncircumstances of dependence. So for generations in the mind of America, the\nNegro has been more of a formula than a human being\u2014a something to be argued\nabout, condemned or defended, to be \u201ckept down,\u201d or \u201cin his place,\u201d or \u201chelped\nup,\u201d to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey\nor a social burden. The thinking Negro even has been induced to share this same\ngeneral attitude, to focus his attention on controversial issues, to see\nhimself in the distorted perspective of a social problem. His shadow, so to\nspeak, has been more real to him than his personality. Through having had to\nappeal from the unjust stereotypes of his oppressors and traducers to those of\nhis liberators, friends and benefactors he has subscribed to the traditional\npositions from which his case has been viewed. Little true social or\nself-understanding has or could come from such a situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have not been\nwatching in the right direction; set North and South on a sectional axis, we\nhave not noticed the East till the sun has us blinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026 The mind of the Negro\nseems suddenly to have slipped from under the tyranny of social intimidation and\nto be shaking off the psychology of imitation and implied inferiority. By\nshedding the old chrysalis of the Negro problem we are achieving something like\na spiritual emancipation. Until recently, lacking self-understanding, we have\nbeen almost as much of a problem to ourselves as we still are to others. But\nthe decade that found us with a problem has left us with only a task. The\nmultitude perhaps feels as yet only a strange relief and a new vague urge, but\nthe thinking few know that in the reaction the vital inner grip of prejudice\nhas been broken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this renewed\nself-respect and self-dependence, the life of the Negro community is bound to\nenter a new dynamic phase, the buoyancy from within compensating for whatever\npressure there may be of conditions from without. The migrant masses, shifting\nfrom countryside to city, hurdle several generations of experience at a leap,\nbut more important, the same thing happens spiritually in the life-attitudes and\nself-expression of the Young Negro, in his poetry, his art, his education and\nhis new outlook, with the additional advantage, of course, of the poise and\ngreater certainty of knowing what it is all about. From this comes the promise\nand warrant of a new leadership. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026 The day of \u201caunties,\u201d \u201cuncles\u201d\nand \u201cmammies\u201d is equally gone. Uncle Tom and Sambo have passed on, and even the\n\u201cColonel\u201d and \u201cGeorge\u201d play barnstorm roles from which they escape with relief\nwhen the public spotlight is off. The popular melodrama has about played itself\nout, and it is time to scrap the fictions, garret the bogeys and settle down to\na realistic facing of facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First we must observe\nsome of the changes which since the traditional lines of opinion were drawn\nhave rendered these quite obsolete. A main change has been, of course, that\nshifting of the Negro population which has made the Negro problem no longer\nexclusively or even predominantly Southern. Why should our minds remain\nsectionalized, when the problem itself no longer is? Then the trend of\nmigration has not only been toward the North and the Central Midwest, but\ncity-ward and to the great centers of industry\u2014the problems of adjustment are\nnew, practical, local and not peculiarly racial. Rather they are an integral\npart of the large industrial and social problems of our present-day democracy.\nAnd finally, with the Negro rapidly in process of class differentiation, if it\never was warrantable to regard and treat the Negro en masse it is becoming with\nevery day less possible, more unjust and more ridiculous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026\nIf in our lifetime the Negro should not be able to celebrate his full initiation\ninto American democracy, he can at least, on the warrant of these things,\ncelebrate the attainment of a significant and satisfying new phase of group development,\nand with it a spiritual Coming of Age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source:\nAlain Locke, \u201cEnter the New Negro,\u201d Survey\nGraphic<\/em> 6 (March 1925), 631\u201334. Available via National Humanities Center (http:\/\/nationalhumanitiescenter.org\/pds\/maai3\/migrations\/text8\/lockenewnegro.pdf<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alain Locke, a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance, was a distinguished academic\u2014the first African American Rhodes Scholar, he obtained a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard\u2014who taught at Howard University for 35 years. In 1925, he published an essay, \u201cEnter the New Negro,\u201d that described an African American population busy seeing \u201ca new vision of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":813,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1681","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1682,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1681\/revisions\/1682"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}