Book Analysis: The New Negro
Cooper Sloan
Mr. Crews
English 1
May 21, 2013
Black Boy Final Essay Racism, it’s a problem that has baffled this nation, and the whole world actually, for centuries. Not just blacks, but any minority in any country is often faced with prejudice because of something they simply can’t control. Really, it’s just like bullying in many schools, but one hundred times worse. In “The New Negro”, Alain Locke has many important ideas and thoughts about society and the treatment of African Americans. He shows you what every life of a black American was like in the 1920’s. Many of the ideas that he writes are shown in Richard Wright’s Black Boy. “So for generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being-a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be “kept down”, or “in his place”, or “helped up,” to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden” (Locke 1). Alain Locke is describing how the black Americans were never really considered people at all to the country that hosted them. They were talked about as possessions and they never had a say in what happened to them (up until the civil rights movements of course). They were sort of a blank, dark slate in the eyes of a white nation. A nation that didn’t know what to do and was still trying to figure things out along the road. For a long time, white men treated black Americans as if they were fresh of the ships from Africa.
Alain Locke and Richard Wright’s ideas go hand in hand. Both talk about and express their feeling towards African American’s treatment and place in society.
After I had outlived the shocks of childhood, after the habit of reflection had been born in me, I used to mull over the strange absence of real kindness in Negroes, how unstable was our tenderness, how lacking in genuine passion we were, how void of great hope, how timid our joy, how bare our traditions, how hollow our traditions, how hollow our
Mr. Crews
English 1
May 21, 2013
Black Boy Final Essay Racism, it’s a problem that has baffled this nation, and the whole world actually, for centuries. Not just blacks, but any minority in any country is often faced with prejudice because of something they simply can’t control. Really, it’s just like bullying in many schools, but one hundred times worse. In “The New Negro”, Alain Locke has many important ideas and thoughts about society and the treatment of African Americans. He shows you what every life of a black American was like in the 1920’s. Many of the ideas that he writes are shown in Richard Wright’s Black Boy. “So for generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being-a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be “kept down”, or “in his place”, or “helped up,” to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden” (Locke 1). Alain Locke is describing how the black Americans were never really considered people at all to the country that hosted them. They were talked about as possessions and they never had a say in what happened to them (up until the civil rights movements of course). They were sort of a blank, dark slate in the eyes of a white nation. A nation that didn’t know what to do and was still trying to figure things out along the road. For a long time, white men treated black Americans as if they were fresh of the ships from Africa.
Alain Locke and Richard Wright’s ideas go hand in hand. Both talk about and express their feeling towards African American’s treatment and place in society.
After I had outlived the shocks of childhood, after the habit of reflection had been born in me, I used to mull over the strange absence of real kindness in Negroes, how unstable was our tenderness, how lacking in genuine passion we were, how void of great hope, how timid our joy, how bare our traditions, how hollow our traditions, how hollow our