Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

words, are the reasons why only three
black writers (Ralph Ellison, James
Baldwin, John A . Williams) are included
among some 55 authors, many
of them third-rate and unimportant
by any truly objective yardstick, and
-read and weep!-why it was necessary
for the editors to select fiction
by three white writers to provide an
authentically "literary" reflection of
how we (blacks) live :
" . . Unlike the Jews, who have
(equal) opportunities and can change
their distinguishing names and noses
and adopt the elite religious and life
styles; and thus not only melt in but
rise to the top in a few generations,
the Negroes have a much longer and
more difficult road to follow in order
to lose their racial stigma and become
plain, ordinary Americans," the
editors explain, gloriously ignorant
of the monstrousness of their presumption
and condescension .
"For these reasons, and some
others," the editors proceed blithely,
"there has been no `Negro renaissance'
in contemporary American
fiction to compare with the `Jewish
renaissance' . . . There are at least a
half-dozen Jewish writers in the absolutely
first-rank of American writing
today, and there are dozens of
others whose potentiality or achievement
places them not far behind .
Only two really first rate Negro writers
' can be named-Ralph Ellison
and James Baldwin-and the ranks
behind them are almost empty . To
mention the names of Ronald Fair,
Ernest J : Games : Chester Himes,
Claude Brown, William Melvin Kelley,
Paule Marshall, and John A.
Williams is to stretch and virtually
exhaust the list of Negroes from
whom we can expect literary fiction
of significant interest. It is not that
Negroes are not writing or being published,
but aside from Ellison and
Baldwin, they have not yet produced
the kind of writing that satisfies the
complex contemporary (read : white)
84
literary tastes and sensibilities . : .
"This situation will of course
change soon," the editors write,
throwing black writers a patronizing
bone, "but up to this time it seems
that the dialects and situations of
Negro life have provided the Negro
writer with the kind of material that
is translatable only into a direct recounting
of or protest against the
sordid or subtle facts of his oppression
."
And, finally, this : "This (all the
above quotes) is all perhaps by way
of explaining that two of the stories
in this section are by Jewish writers
and one is by a southern white
woman ."
There it is . And you had better
believe it!
Two Jews and a southern white
woman are better equipped to write
about race because, apparently, they
are not hampered by "the kind of
material that is translatable only into
a direct recounting of or protest
against the sordid or subtle facts of
(black) oppression ." In other words,
the black angle of vision is literarily
invalid ; true literature on race comes
only through the white sensibility .
To begin with, none of the whiteauthored
stories is really about black
people, and there is some question
in the mind of this black reader
whether those black people portrayed
in the white stories came through as
living, breathing human beings . But
my sensibility is a black one and, in
the view of the editors of How We
Live, is therefore automatically not
to be taken seriously . If, after some
40 years, I do not know black people
and how they live and am incapable
of passing judgment on the authentic
portrayal of black people and black
life; then I can learn all that I do
not know by reading Jewish and
southern writers . The premise is familiar,
of course : In every facet of
American life, white people know
better than black people what is best
March 1969 NEGRO DIGEST