Locke vs Baldwin

 Baldwin’s New Negroes of Chicago are most notably members of the community that by living changed the community or embodied the new creation of self that is the New Negro while Locke’s New Negroes that explicitly tried to create a new identity for Black people through writings.  All the Chicago entrepreneurs knew the way America worked during the 1920s and 1930s and were aware of the inherent racism they would face in their endeavors. There are those like Thomas Dorsey that by profession, he was a church speech coach and choir leader, created art that was an embodiment of Black life that we now interpret as they New Negro identity.  He exemplified the developing Black church that changed the culture and had a significant difference from white establishments of the same purpose, capitalizing on the new Black audience and congregation to make a living.  He did not intend to create this New Negro identity.  The artists of Locke’s work may write about their church experience or scribe poetry about their relationship with the lord to express the new sense of self that they get from the Black church.

The entrepreneur and the artist are both targeting, as Locke says, a “nascent” identity and community of people that thirsts for something to call their own in a country that has told them what they should be.  By the nature of the country’s elimination of a documented past or culture, every aspect of both groups was original, having no precedence.  This was a monumental creation of a community as a whole, requiring staples of any society, art, language, faith, economy, social norms, etc.  The new independence found in Harlem allowed the artists to be more authentic than white artists because they had no previous foundation to build upon or reference.  The economic freedom of Chicago allowed Black businesses and a Black middle class to thrive and circulate money through the Black community, allowing the community for the first time to sustain itself socially and financially.

She of the Dancing Feet Sings

Countee Cullen's poem "She of the Dancing Feet Sings" from page 131 of The New Negro tells of a woman that is happy in a place that others deem imperfect because dancing is banned.  She would rather enjoy herself in her place where she may dance than in the generally accepted heaven that the angels keep ordered and sacred.  This poem has the same essence of the story George Swanson Starling tell on page 398 0f The Warmth of Other Suns, where the children of the migrants are sent back to the South for the summer so that they may see the other possibility or the home from which their family came.  They send the children to the South so they may see that the North might not feel so wonderful and free, but in comparison, it is heaven.  The limits on dancing in the realm of the speaker in the poem are analogous to the racism of the North, the only racism these children born in New York know.  Thy see the restrictions of the South or the hell of the poem and are content to live with the problems that they must deal with in the North.  The parents also want the children to see the value of the sacrifices the parents made to get out of the state of Florida in pursuit of New York.  They had to give up jobs, family stability, and the culture they were born into which is similar to the natural dance that the speaker in Cullen's poem is supposed to give up to make it into heaven.  The dancing that the speaker must keep in order to enjoy the land that others do not consider heaven is that same as the experience of life in the South that the parents in Starling's story want their children to know, so that they may have a background or sense of self to grow from just as the dance is the speaker's identity.

Self-Assessment

Living on the Black Scholars floor my freshman year, I met a lot of Black Studies majors.  I was an Art History major with no intention of taking any Art History classes at the time, planning to eventually switch to a science.  The students that I knew in Black Studies classes talked about them as if they were actually entertaining and meaningful education, which I did not doubt; however, I constantly heckled them for choosing such a subject as a major by telling them how worthless it was, by voicing my hatred for the subject at Black student organization meetings, and by boasting about my financially stable future in the sciences.  Winter quarter of freshman year, I took Black Studies 50 with Professor Otis Madison.  It was the meaningful and entertaining education that my colleagues had been speaking of, and I enjoyed myself immensely.  But being a man who must keep up appearances, I still would not allow anyone to see that I enjoyed a subject that I assumed to be substandard, hiding my enjoyment as I took four more Black Studies courses over the next year.  I kept taking my science classes, settling into Financial Mathematics by my third year.  Taking these economics classes alongside Black Studies classes created an inner dialogue because the Black Studies courses I was in, Robinson's 162, Madison's 102, and Akudinobi's 172, laid out how the economy was used exploit people of color for the last 200 years and the econ classes were the economy that was exploiting people of color for 200 years.  I concluded that economics, accounting, business, etc. were evil and switched to a pure math major.  When looking at what classes to take entering my final year, I noticed that I had quite a collection of Black Studies major requirements completed and fought with myself until I was able to accept having Black Studies on a diploma.  I then applied for a double major in Mathematics and Black Studies fall quarter of my senior year, taking 1 and 133 with professor Banks and 4 with professor Gaye Johnson.  After the base classes, I was sure that this was an acceptable major to pursue and was almost ashamed that my arrogant self had fallen for the tricks of the haters that said Black Studies was inferior. I look forward to this seminar as the final task to better understand how the country I have to claim as home operates.

Jordan Mahoney