THE NEW NEGRO

"There is, of course, a warrantably comfortable feeling in being on the right side of the country's professed ideals. We realize that we cannot be undone without America's undoing . It is within the great gamut of this attitude that the thinking Negro faces America, but with variations of mood that are if anything more significant than the attitude itself. Sometimes we have it taken with the defiant ironic challenge of [Claude] McKay: "'Mine is the future grinding down to today Like a great landslip moving to the sea, Bearing its freight of debris far away Where the green hungry waters restlessly Heave mammoth pyramids, and break and roar Their eerie challenge to the crumbling shore.' "Sometimes, perhaps more frequently as yet, it is taken in the fervent and almost filial appeal and counsel of [James] Weldon Johnson 's: "'O Southland, dear Southland! Then why do you still cling To the idle age and musty page, To a dead and useless thing?' "But between defiance and appeal, midway almost between cynicism and hope, the prevailing mind stands in the mood of the same author's 'To America ', an attitude of sober query and stoical challenge : "'How would you have us, as we are? Or sinking 'neath the load we bear , Our eyes fixed forward on a star, Or gazing empty at despair? 'Rising or falling? Men or things? With dragging steps or footsteps fleet? Strong, willing sinews in your wings, Or tightening chains about your feet?' "More and more, however, an intelligent realization of the great discrepancy between the American social creed and the American social practice forces upon the Negro the taking of the moral advantage that is his. Only the steadying and sobering effect of a truly characteristic greatness of spirit prevents the rapid rise of a definite cynicism and counter-hate and a defiant superiority feeling. Human as this reaction would be, a majority still deprecate its advent, and would gladly see it forestalled by the speedy amelioration of its causes . We wish our race pride to be a healthier, more positive achievement than a feeling based on a realization of the shortcomings of others." P.12-13, "The New Negro," THE NEW NEGRO AN INTERPRETATION, by Dr. Alain LeRoy Locke (1925, 2015)