In Harlem Renaissance literature the gaze is a common trope used to represent feelings of longing and desire. Subjects glance at the foreign or unknown “other”, visually captivated by the things that are different from them. In the eyes of Black characters however, this gaze takes on a more complicated and sometimes even devious meaning. The “other”, in Harlem literature, usually represents the unachievable. Characters who turn their gaze towards “others” are in actuality looking at something that they desire but cannot possess or become.
In the play Color Struck by Zora Neale Hurston Emma, a dark skinned woman, is jealous of Effie who is light skinned. Emma believes that her boyfriend John is attracted to Effie because of her lighter skin. During the cakewalk party, Effie offers Emma and John a piece of pie which Emma refuses. As Effie walk away, Emma glares at her which doesn’t go unnoticed by John. The two get into an argument and Emma accuses John of “carryin’ on wid dat punkin-colored ole gal.”
Emma’s gaze is one of jealousy and covetousness. She is afraid of losing John to a half-white woman and is therefore painfully aware of their presence everytime John is around them.
“He’s in there with her-Oh, them half whites, they gets everything, they gets everything everybody else wants! The men, the jobs-everything! The whole world is got a sign on it. Wanted: Light colored. Us blacks was made for cobble stones.”
Emma’s belief that half whites “get everything” insinuates a gaze that is not born out of desire but out of watchfulness. She is not captivated by mulatto women — she is wary of them. To her, light skinned women are not just to be looked at, they are something to be feared.
Irene in Nella Larsen’s Passing exercises this same caution with Clare. Clare, who is a negro woman passing for white, enters into Irene’s life after a long time of silence. Soon, Clare begins to win over the favor of Irene’s children and husband. Irene, like Emma, accuses her husband Brian of finding Clare “extraordinarily beautiful”. She becomes watchful of Clare and is distressed by her proximity to Brian:
“For a minute Irene hesitated, then turned her head, though she knew what it was that held Hugh’s gaze. Clare, who had suddenly clouded all her days. Brian, the father of Ted and Junior…Then she saw him smile, and the smile made his face all eager and shining. Impelled by some inner urge of loyalty to herself, she glanced away. But only for a moment. And when she turned towards them again, she thought that the look on his face was the most melancholy and yet the most scoffing that she had ever seen upon it.”
This instance of “watching” and “gazing” is one that is painful to Irene. She is watching her husband be “seduced” by an “exotic” woman and feels helpless to stop it. I put ‘seduced’ in quotes here because it is suggested that Irene is being paranoid about Brian and Clare’s relationship. Whether Irene’s assumptions are rational or not is debatable, but the fact remains that Irene feels as if she is “losing” to a woman who is arguably the “other”. Although Clare is Black she still lives life as an “other” due to her social status and “exotic” race.
When contemplating “exoticism” it’s typical for the looker to want the thing he/she regards as being exotic. Their gaze is usually one of attraction and normally indicates a desire to possess or claim the thing being watched. However, in works such as Color Struck and Passing, the exotic represents invasion. The foreign “other” does not come in peace but comes to take and steal. This is another common theme in Harlem literature especially in regards to whiteness. Although Clare and Effie are only half-white, they represent a group that is prone to “taking” or “stealing” from Blackness (especially Black women). While Irene’s racial background is not fully explored, she still lives as a Black woman and is therefore not immune to this thievery. The gaze, in regards to Black women, are therefore layered with dimensions that can touch upon status, class, forbidden love and other unattainable qualities, but it is almost always intermingled with a sense of jealousy and panic due to the instability of their lives and the “whiteness” that invades it. The trope, by modern standards, can be construed negatively — but the panic of losing to “whiteness” and the watchful gaze kept over it is not entirely unfounded.
Crisis Magazine works to visually reconcile ideas of Blackness with modernity and culture. Images of prominent and historical Black figures on the covers highlight the intellectual and cultural influence of Black people, defying the racist depictions so common at the time. Instead of stereotypical caricatures, Crisis shows Black people as participants of respectable society. Most of the women are dressed in elegant Victorian garb while the men can be seen in suits and military uniforms. They display elements of wealth, class and education amongst a variety of figures. This, of course, is done intentionally. In addition to refuting racial stereotypes, Crisis images serve to “repackage” the negro, arguing that he has evolved beyond that of a slave. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr writes in the essay The Trope of a New Negro and the Reconstruction of the Image of the Black:
“…the image of a “New Negro” has served various generations of black intellectuals as a sign of plenitude, of regeneration, of a truly reconstructed presence” (130).
The May 1921 issue perfectly demonstrates this. The cover features Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a french violinist and composer of African descent. The issue features a biography of Bologne, detailing his many feats and accomplishments despite being a “mulatto”. Bologne, by Gates’s definition, exemplifies plentitude, regeneration and presence. His feature is just one of the many Black figures who personify this “New Negro”.
Nevertheless, the “New Negro” is in actuality a paradoxical concept. The idea relies on the theory of “newness” or a “reconstruction” of Black identity, however figures like Bologne predate the “New Negro” concept which, according to Gates, arrives in the late 19th early 20th century. The New Negro, therefore, is not new at all — he has always existed. Gates also addresses this fallacy in his essay:
“The paradox of this claim is inherent in the trope itself, combining as it does a concern with time, antecedents, and heritage, on the one hand, with a concern for a cleared space, the public face of the race, on the other” (132).
The New Negro trope demands both a new yet redeemed creation, a figure that has both transcended his past yet has no path at all. Crisis, therefore, abandons this impossible task for something more achievable. While the conventional New Negro is about repackaging or “rebranding” Blacks for the appeasement of Whites, Crisis conversely argues that The New Negro has always been. He is not a new creation, but an aesthetic that has already existed within Black spaces.
I think it’s important to note here that Crisis is primarily for Black readers. It is geared towards a specific audience with the task of producing the individual (or collective) edification of African Americans. We can see that, contrary to Gate’s discourse, Du Bois is not using Crisis to appeal to white people. He is not intent on “repackaging” Blacks for the sake of whites but is repackaging them for themselves, working to produce a less destructive narrative and give Blacks something to aspire to. Du Bois seeks to instill pride in his people in order to move towards advancement and upward mobility. While his methods in doing this can be considered flawed (using primarily light skin people on his covers) the intention, and by extension the result, is still the same.
Chapter 2 of Word, Image, and the New Negro : Representation and Identity in the Harlem Renaissance Anne Elizabeth Carroll assesses Black representation in The Opportunity, and it’s dedication to objectivity. In it, she explains that The Opportunity’s editor, Charles Spurgeon Johnson, felt objectivity was necessary for “challenging assumptions about why African Americans were leaving the South” (71). She further explains Johnson’s belief that although White Americans may be outraged, African Americans would not be able to survive on that sympathy forever:
Errors in judgements of the character of the migrants, in turn, would have made their adjustment to life in the North more difficult. If their flight was from persecution, Johnson explained, that “excites little sympathy either from the practical employer or the northern white population among whom these Negroes will hereafter live. (71)
Images, therefore, such as the one featured in The Opportunity’s September 1923 article “How Much is the Migration a Flight from Persecution”, may have been initially provocative, but the long term effects were potentially damaging. According to Johnson, constantly exposing white men to images of poverty or persecution would eventually lead him to believe that Black people could not sustain themselves. He would see them as completely codependent. Johnson thus feared that white employers would begin to see Blacks as a liability. Instead of feeling sympathy, the white man would be afraid of becoming responsible for such a large and unsustainable group — in other words, he would be afraid that they might once again become his burden.
‘The White Man’s Burden’ (Apologies to Rudyard Kipling) Victor Gillam, Judge magazine, 1 April 1899)
Frankly, this idea of the “White Man’s Burden” is of course nothing new. It was first coined in Rudyard Kipling’s poem of the same name in the late 19th century as an excuse for continued imperialism. Colonialists, in an attempt to justify their holdings of foreign lands, believed that they were responsible for the edification and usefulness of Negroes and other non-white races. Assuming authority over these races was presented as an act of duty as these races could not provide for themselves. As a result, African Americans, subsequently, were forced into a relationship of complete codependency and subjugation to the “superior” white Americans who knew what was best for them.
This codependent relationship, however, began to overturn in the early 20th century. Instead of voluntarily consenting to this “burden”, Carroll suggests that white Americans were now resentful towards the idea of helping Negroes. The once altruistic sentiments of imperialism were now replaced by feelings of infringement and inconvenience. Charles Spurgeon Johnson and WEB Du Bois, who were both keenly aware of this opposition, therefore dedicated The Opportunity and The Crisis respectively to instilling this idea of Black sustainability. Instead of images of poverty and destitution, the periodicals would instead combat these misconceptions with stories of prosperity and advancement, showcasing Black accomplishments and potential. As a result, many of these publications turned their sighs to the newly prosperous and culturally developing region of Harlem as their muse.
Initially published during the Harlem Renaissance The Opportunity, introducing itself as the “Journal of a Negro Life”, takes an objective approach to illustrating Black advancement. It’s stories and articles attempt to present non-fictional works and streams of data as stumbling blocks to the “inferior Black” narrative. “The Corner” by Eunice Hunton Carter, published in The Opportunity’s April 1925 issue, is a creative nonfiction narrative detailing the cultural robustness of everyday Harlem life:
Motor cars whizzed by carrying throngs of pleasure seekers, aliens many of them, in search of novelty and thrill, come to the black city for something new…In reality as their cars swept past the corner, they were passing life by. They had missed a chance of seeing life when they didn’t stop and watch the boy on the corner who for clapping companions in front of the drug store was doing a dance that was a bit of Buck and Wing, a bit of “Charleston” and many other things. They didn’t hear the errand boy who came out of the drug store singing a song that had drifted out of the cabaret to come from him purified by the sheer joy and spontaneity of his singing…
Harlem Socialites: Photo James Van Der Zee
A group of school girls, bright felt hats perched jauntily on sleek bobbed heads, with short fur coats from which bright scarves fluttered in the night, passed by linked arm in arm, chattering as they went home from a late moving picture…” (pg 121 in archive)
The imagery is vivid and the result is clear; Carter is painting Harlem as a place of culture and community, where different characters occupy various stations of life. Also, Carter’s reference to Harlem as a “black city” represents that it is not only a stable community, but a thriving one. She paints for us images of music, industrialization, education, and economy. There is joy and prosperity by humble standards. What’s even more noteworthy is Carter’s description of the neighborhood as an attraction. “…pleasure seekers, aliens many of them, in search of novelty and thrill,” she writes. Carter therefore stipulates that Harlem is not just appealing to negroes, but is appealing to tourists as well. The “alien pleasure seekers”, as she calls them, are looking for the thrill of “Harlem life”, they see it is new and exciting, comparable to the other New York areas.
Eunice Carter
“The Corner” is just one of the many depictions The Opportunity uses to refute the new “white man’s burden” narrative. It highlights Harlem’s vivacity without ignoring the underlying problems of poverty and racism. In addition Carter herself , Manhattan’s first female African American prosecutor, perfectly exemplifies the kind of voice The Opportunity benefits from. Her success as a lawyer further proves that Blacks could be invaluable, self sustaining citizens if given the chance. Her work both in and out of prose exemplified Black productivity.
Works Cited
Carter, Eunice Hunton. “The Corner.” The Opportunity, Apr. 1925, pp. 114–115.
This instance of “watching” and “gazing” is one that is painful to Irene. She is watching her husband be “seduced” by an “exotic” woman and feels helpless to stop it. I put ‘seduced’ in quotes here because it is suggested that Irene is being paranoid about Brian and Clare’s relationship. Whether Irene’s assumptions are rational or not is debatable, but the fact remains that Irene feels as if she is “losing” to a woman who is arguably the “other”. Although Clare is Black she still lives life as an “other” due to her social status and “exotic” race.
