Abstract: African-Americans are often perceived as a homogeneous or cohesive body within the social and racial spectrum in the United States. They are often lampooned together when issues of race, segregation, civil rights, and affirmative action are mentioned as if Negroes or blacks were affected by the above issues in the same manner or degree. This paper argues that African-Americans have always been divided and fragmented. Their cultural history has been marred by disputes caused by intra as well as inter-racial differences. Ideological, class, and attitude factors seem to take African-American divisions beyond the usual din of black-white antagonism. The markers of Negro or black racial identity and its attendant factors are every conceivable hue- and matters of ideology and attitude as much as pigmentation. The Harlem Renaissance and its “New Negro” project divided more than it united the black literati in the 1920s and 1930s. It can be seen as the seedbed for later inter-racial contestations in Negro or black literature and culture in general.
Keywords: Overcivilization, Collective/individual identity, Eternal child/feminine, Feminization, Fragmentation, Harlem Renaissance, Inter/Intra-racial, Gender, Manliness, Masculinity, Neurasthenia, The New Negro.
Title: “Capitalizing on White Crazes for Things Black”: The Racial and Gender Politics of the New Negro Movement
Author: Borni Lafi
International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research
ISSN 2348-3156 (Print), ISSN 2348-3164 (online)
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