A Long Way from Home

McKay, Claude. "A Long Way From Home." The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David L. Lewis. New York: Viking Penguin, 1994. 157-72. Print.

Perhaps it is because I am reading these essays and excerpts one after another without any breaks, but they’ve all begun to flow into one big stream of the same stuff. McKay is saying much the same in these excerpts that Johnson and Wright said in their essays, and further affirm my growing dislike of Du Bois. I wonder if this inner-circle fighting and back talking is part of what led to the downfall of the Renaissance – it certainly is growing old in my mind. It is funny, too, that the equality and unification that all of the players of the Harlem Renaissance preach so fluently about is only an illusion to their social group.

I can’t help but shake the feeling that the talented tenth/literati/whatever were really just a group of friends who liked to play favorites and pat themselves and each other on the back. The more we read these articles, the more I see the authors talking less and less about the racial problems and more and more about how they feel and relate to other famous people. It is almost becoming a game of “who can name the most famous names,” and it is stupid, like a high school clique. It is no wonder, then, that the Renaissance failed so completely and that it did almost nothing for the betterment of black society. My guess is that most blacks outside of the clique did not much care for these people, and I don’t think that I do now either.