The Negro Renaissance and Its Significance

Johnson, Charles S. "The Negro Renaissance and Its Significance." The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David L. Lewis. New York: Viking Penguin, 1994. 206-18. Print.

This article makes me wonder about the actual relevance the Harlem Renaissance had on furthering black society in America. Rather than discuss the impact of the Renaissance or how average Joe Black viewed the writings and artwork of those famous for the Renaissance, Johnson discusses the careers and lives of the select few who are notable during this time period. While this was obviously his case on the outset of this essay, it still brings up the question of impact. Was the Renaissance really about black society uprising, or was it more about the 20 or so people who are now remembered as playing a part in it? As we finish this class, I sadly am beginning to think it is more of the latter. This is particularly evident as we read some of the later essays by Du Bois, Washington and even McKay that deal almost solely with themselves and their opinions rather than the facts of action and life of blacks in America. Although the literati did a good job of maintaining the ostensible role of voices for societal change, I think that they sold out fairly early on in the Renaissance. This is probably why the Renaissance died out before it probably should have, and why there was not a lot of change in society until Rosa Parks and her lot began to actually do something about segregation thirty and forty years later.

The last part of this essay discusses briefly the books of black writers, and it brought me on a bit of a quest to find one black author in today’s world who does not write about black this and that. I read a lot of science fiction, thrillers, and drama, and not one of the authors I am familiar with is black. Interestingly, only one of the 20 or so authors that I religiously follow is anything other than a white man – women seem to be just as ostracized in popular fiction. A Google search for any black science fiction writers resulted in only one name that I am familiar with, Octavia Butler, who I consider to be a disastrously bad writer. I read Kindred by her (a horrible, head-ache inducing experience marked by the fiery desire to see all of her one-dimensional, pointless and hateable characters burn in Hell), and while it barely qualifies as science fiction (I would judge it to be more of a dark fantasy), it still is entirely about black society and culture. Indeed, I could not find one single black writer of science fiction whose novels do not in some way deal with racial issues. So I wonder, then, how far have we really come with regards to integration of the races? If a black man had written Foundation, would it have been taken as seriously as it had since Asimov wrote it? I honestly do not have an answer, and that is somewhat depressing.