Racial Division in Harlem Renaissance Literature
Okay, "racial division" is probably the most obvious theme people might think of when the phrase "Harlem Renaissance" pops up. But that doesn't mean racial divides were easy to comprehend way back then—or now, for that matter.
In fact, race relations during the Harlem Renaissance were quite complex, and a lot of contradictory things were happening all at the same time. Two steps forward, one step back, are we right?
On the one hand, there were still officially segregated spaces for black and white people at the time. But then white people would show up at clubs in Harlem hoping to mix with black residents. Just like today, some black people and mixed-race individuals also attempted to "pass" as white.
So while racial division may have been the rule of the time, there were all sorts of ways people tried to break that rule and make the "color-line" come crashing down.
Of course, the consequences for "trespassing" into white territory were high for black Americans, while the consequences for whites "trespassing" into black territory were primarily sociopolitical. Lucky for us, we had some awesome writers in the Harlem Renaissance cataloging all this tension and strife for us, so we can (re)visit this time period through their writing.
People like W.E.B. Du Bois wrote at length about how the country's racial divisions affected how blacks thought about themselves.
These effects were, and still are, complicated. Even though we all know racial division's a nasty practice, it also produced what Du Bois called "second sight": that ability to see the world and the self from (at least) two different angles.
Not a silver lining, exactly. But a kind of gift that only the oppressed can receive.
Chew on This:
Who mourns for a black man that gets lynched in Dixieland (a.k.a. the South) in the 1920s, under the eyes of a white-faced God? Whew, that sounds like a racially tense situation to us. Langston Hughes investigated exactly this tragic scenario in his poem, "Song for a Dark Girl."
Actually, no one defines racial division during the Harlem Renaissance better than Langston Hughes. His most famous poem, "Harlem (Dream Deferred)," doesn't even mention the racial divisions of his time; it shows them. Pretty rad, if we do say so ourselves.