With Langston Hughes in the USSR

Patterson, Louise T. "With Langston Hughes in the USSR." The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David L. Lewis. New York: Viking Penguin, 1994. 182-89. Print.

This little essay was interesting on a few levels, but foremost because of the controversy that arose between the two camps of the group in Russia. It wasn’t informative because there was a schism – who could spend months with a small set of people and not incur some harsh feelings? – but because of the way the public reacted to the differing statements released by each group. Rather than publish and focus on the statement by Hughes and his group that attested to the poor quality of script and the inability, therefore, to create a movie in any reasonable length of time, the American newspapers decided to distribute the statement that the Russians had betrayed African Americans by not making the movie. They turned what was an innocently bad product into a political statement, and the media ate it up.

While I am in no way surprised that the media of our country decided that the Russian “betrayal” was more news-worthy (besides, who actually believes that the News is news?), I am surprised that they sided with the African Americans. The position the media networks were put in is this: either portray the Russians as hospitable, good people who simply were unable to fulfill their promises to a group of blacks, or to turn the Russians into an evil country of bigotry that is too racist to make a movie concerning Africans. Taken in line with the state of the country during this time period and its rampant racism and bigotry, the hypocrisy is overwhelming. Apparently, though, the Russians were more evil than the blacks – at least to the news networks.