Ideologial forces in the work of Negro writers

We are all imprisoned within our culture who are prisoners of our culture and it's difficult or almost impossible to break through the customary ways of perceiving the world about us except through the lens of our culture which we incorporate at an early age. Sometimes noone prospectuses share the palate culture by the stimulation of some powerful ideological movement which throws new light on everyday world events. A new perspective can lead to insight change. And that's all all this new insight and change oft times comes to philosophers scientists political leaders and above all be artists and of all the art that has been the writer who from the beginning of time. Has fashioned various brave new world.

The cruelty of process of the writer is difficult to describe and understand. It may be said that old men dream of freedom but it requires a powerful revelation and perception of the artist to capture these dreams and put them into shape in form and to in order that they might move man to action is about the those riders those negro riders that I will be for the most part. And it has been my good fortune to know most of the who live and speak about it. I want to shed some light. Upon the influences of various ideological formulations which I have to touch. Personal perception and given them inside. One of the most crucial critical and fundamental forces affecting the negro writer has

been that concerned with psychoanalysis and the social sciences in general. At this point I should say that all the orbit he'll introduce me as a sociologist to my sociological friends they're very glad to call me a writer and my writing friends happy to call me a sociologist. I mean at home in neither camp but love BOWL 0. I just start with an autobiographical state. And this leads me to one of the central themes which is run through all of the talks I've heard it seems to me and that is the question of identity and the question of identity is not alone the question the niggles question for identity as I should try to point out the Negro has a better opportunity now to find a

true adaptive density than has white America. I says start with an autobiographical statement because as Mr. Hibbs indicated I've just finished my autobiography and I learned in my autobiography I did to see it you know I learned three things. I thought I learned first. I was a man. Well let me come surprise. I know I can say a lot of things. That I didn't have any doubts about this you know one lot of other people didn't either. But. But I found out I was the man I'd better not labor that point in public. And I found out that I was it negro. No I didn't find out that I was a biological negro because biologically

I imagine from what I know of my past some about one third Kaizen about one third Indian and one third gig. So I didn't find out I was a biological negro because. There are few biological need rules any place here including Africa. As a matter of fact the term Negro is is a misnomer. But I was so clearly my tradition my heritage was Zaf of a group of people in America who have been designated sociological sociologically as Negroes. And I was a part of them my fortune was tied with them and my identity. And if there was a real Katyn at all it was found its roots in this group of people who has been a den of five sociologically as Negro. That's when I found out something else I said there were three. I found I could write.

Now. I want to for a moment. Allison Willis and a book of his recently called Love come out called The quest for identity. I'm still laboring this point of the density the quest for density He says nowadays the sense of self is deficient. The question of adolescence who am I where my groin. What is the meaning of life. Receives no final answer. Nor can I. They be laid aside the uncertainty persists the

period of being uncommitted is long. The choice with which terminates more work tend to place personal of them if occasion does not become fix does not therefore provide and unchanging vantage point from which to view experience. Man is still the measure of all things but is no longer the inner man that bases it is the other man. Specifically it is a plurality of men in the group and what the group provides is shifting patterns. What is measured is conformity. It does not provide the hard inner core by which the value of patterns in conformity is determined. The hardening in your core has in our times become Did feels elusive. Often fluid.

More than ever before what is aware of the identity he appears to have and more than ever before is dissatisfied with it. It doesn't fit. It seems 18 as though the unique course of one's life had been determined by UNC Ford acted in commitments of all kinds. Case no marital moral are made. Made more tentative leave long term goals seen become progressively less feasible to go on just a moment with Weller's identity is a coherent sense of self. It depends upon the words which one endeavors and one civili make sense that they are meaningful in the context in which this life is lived. It depends upon stable value and upon the conviction that one's actions and values are harmoniously related.

Is this a sense of holiness of intergration of knowing what is night what is is right and what is wrong and being able to choose. During the past 50 years there's been a change in the experience quality of life and with the result that identity now appears to achieve harder to maintain. I said a moment ago and this point comes to me more and more frequently in discussion with my colleagues at the University of California in discussion with the letters were by many writer friends of all over the country. My white friends turned to me time and again and say you are fortunate. At least you are a Negro and you were fighting for something you know is right in that the Negro has not because in he's

any innately superior to White bad but because of the accident of history. And I think in a sense this is what Mr. Jones was saying this morning that because of the accident of history the negro now can see the density. And come out of the very fiber and texture of his living of this struggle of this hardship and this. Isn't that bad. And avenge we can take from the disadvantage of 300 years of subordination in the United States in the case of the American Negro. Her big deal cites both Richard Wright

and Ralph Ellison as being fascinated with what he'll call. That's the sense of the social dream which destroys its victim. Of course she is referring to this society at large. He'll goes on to say that quote essentially the framework for native son one of the most important novels in contemporary literature is to be found in this implicit assumption that the state order is directly responsible for the degradation of the Natal that American society produces conditions which distort destroy individual beings who are part of a in an oppressed group. The character in the book who serves as rights spokesman still States sad taken collectively collectively they are not simply 12 million people. In reality they constitute

a separate nation. Stern stripped and held captive within this nation devoid of political social economic and property right in the quotation the loss of a density ultimately leads the individual to a state of a nation both from an cellphone from society at large. He is then constantly preoccupied with the seeking of the cell. And this is where his time and energy go. As an Eagle writer achieves this quest for identity he has developed he will develop new concepts for the writing class. For literary discipline control and he's seeking an involvement in the larger worlds of arts and ideology I seldom feel as old as I really am

but I felt rather old this morning when I heard Jones striking out. For absolutely new concepts and I wondered thinking back how does this young generation of Nagel's find a firm footing. Which one has to have before they can put their shoulder to the wheel. On what ground solid ground. Because they have they found and of course they are in the tradition of Allison Wright and Baldwin and others behind them. But to gradually. We are achieving. A new way of looking at the world. I would predict that regardless of consequences. And I'm not very optimistic about the future as all come to.

But that the need will again not because of any innate superiority but because he has had a most peculiar experience in America. Three hundred years of slavery and subordination will contribute disproportionately to the literature to the Musee to all art forms in America. Before considering the psychological effects of the American Cultural on both blacks and whites I saw shall touch briefly upon historical aspects of the negro. It is unique in terms of world history. I subscribe to the school of thought that little very little of African culture was brought to the United States and that which the Negro did retain

was isolated and died a rapid death and as such the so-called American Negro subculture is purely a product of the niggles experience in America. What I'm saying is that the American Negro subculture is the American culture strain through the prism of three hundred years of subordination. Eve Franklin Frazier in his last book The Negro church describes the slow growth of cohesiveness of the Negro community for the cruelty of the plantation system. I did not even allow the development of a stable family group. It was an integral church that first brought some cohesion to the negro. It was many years before negroes as a group could even visit a free world. Certainly there were

slave revolts in insurrection but it was not until the negro as a group began to have revelations such as the revelation that I had when I was a young boy in school and learned that the Japanese nation had whipped Russia. I white nation. And with the revelation that things are not imp are not permanent just because they are that because social institutions appear at the moment to be full of frozen solid. It does not mean the time will live changing. But to get that vision to step outside so to speak of one's culture and to find new to identity and to seek a new definition

of oneself and to demand a new purpose and recognition of himself is what is happening. And to the Negro population in the United States today and things are happening which I did not think possible within my life and I'm sure that there be further changes which will be equally as incredible. The only way to analyze the position of the Negro in America is to analyze the culture in its entirety. America has failed to develop in a meaningful way of life which could make our country great by way of fulfilling the vast areas of our individual personalities which are under used and truncated. This is evidence by the indescribable loneliness which pervades our existence. We have embrace and are the victims of a configurations of

shoddy bad news. The group of the get rich quick compulsion and are surrendered to the Bitch Goddess success. The material Bitch Goddess success. We are victims of the can please. These vacuums and put emphasis on sex for gratification rather than for deep organic expression of experience and communication. The our inability to formulate a meaningful religion in spite of frenetic Franke churchgoing and an inability to rid ourselves of an arche economic system which defies all laws of logic humanity and downright common sense. And this in the most bow the whole country in the world. A country birth in principles both noble and bold.

Forever familiar to us all in the American dream. This nobility of purpose in a new world should have led to a more mature culture. Who and what portions were the killers of the dream. For one thing America is a culture which places high value on appearances. By all means one must be beautiful must conform to the stereotype of the so-called Anglo-Saxon beauty and appearance all with this angle Saxon appearance comes a puritanical ideology which engulfed one in they have two such as cleanliness is next to godliness. So the next is a step in this train of thought as it applies to the Negro is quite

obvious. He is made to feel dirty and consequently evil and from the point of view of appearance alone the nigger who is not in step with the acceptable so-called normal. And perhaps it is at this very point that they need grow first began to develop his sense of team over his blackness. The black boy or girl learned more early than we think that there is something wrong with him that he isn't just an ordinary person that he has in the words of Dr. Kaufmann a stigma which he must live with for the rest of his life. This sets up great waves of shame which in cults entire personality the whole physical and psychological being the reason for the all pervasive pervasiveness of the

feeding the shame is that Shane has no focal point for cause in the environment. Shane is the result of a very overall rejection. The reason for the rejection are irrational and without structure. Shame has unknown roots for explaining itself within the society. I know that shame was. I know that Shane was somethin that I had to fight for a group or people who have lived for hundreds of years as a sheen people. It takes almost a religious conversion in the sense of William Jane to overcome the shame shame of hair texture shame a pigmentation shame for the broad

features. And yet there is nothing in the environment that tells us that we should be Chaman yet everything in the varmint dictates that we must be Haitian. And so we must literally have a conversion lift ourselves up and that is what is happening. The psychological content of the negro revote. Thank you. I had to have tried some time to get at the core of Negro personality in America and I think it was 15 years ago that I tried to describe a syndrome a psychological syndrome which I still find that although. To an extent is changing and it was

15 years ago when I wrote the statement of this syndrome. All of what I could call the oppression a phobia of the negro. I am convinced that at the core of the negroes mentality there is a fear hate fear complex. My assumption is that all men and Western European civilization have unconscious guilt and fear of punishment for this scale. In the case of the Dunn group this guilt is to a large extent irrational. It can be shown to be fall. A figment of the imagination a holdover from early childhood experiences. Gil can more easily be resolved by psychiatric treatment or even by rational cogitation. But in the Negro the psychological problem is intensified for

him. Punishment in the actual environment is ever present. Violence psychological and physical lives at it from every side. The personality is rude lives by an unfriendly environment. This reinforces and intensifies the insecurity he feels as a person living in our highly complex society. Such attacks on his personality lead to resentment and hatred of the white man. However the certain knowledge that he will be punished if he. Motions are discovered only come power on his fear. Fears lead to hate. But the personality recoils with the intensified and compound of fear this is a negro's reaction to his own brutalization subordinating and her it is this

vicious circle in which the Negro is call and in which is personalities pulverize by and everybody suffers so propelling rocket of emotional conflict. The negro has been heard. He knows it. He wants to strike back but he must not. There is evidence everywhere that to do so would lead to his destruction. It is that within the matrix of this psychological syndrome the hand that the negro develops his shame culture. I speak incidentally in may come of the question that the white man of my power developed has developed a guild culture and I might if anyone's interested go into some further definition of the difference between kill and change. You are all aware of the brutalities that happened only yesterday or

seen only yesterday. I still speak autobiographically to make my point more if there be my own father was a slave. I've heard everyone several people mention somebodies grandfather several times seven talked about their grandfathers. Well my dad was a slave and it is really when one thinks back is it's incredible. Like Jean and Jimmy Vowell says white people like to pretend like it all didn't happen that we didn't have a period to save. Well then Lou can fool me it even happened. You know I mean I don't even have to have a history book. They had told me he was a sorry he could be sold like an ox. I remember my childhood I was 10 of Negro being living

and his genitals cut off his living body. Good doubt then that there's a scar in my soul that some increment of hate and fear remain although I have gone through nonces couple. And that I am emotionally committed to the democratic idea still very is a whole world of dis deep suspicion and white people who come to us so ignorant just open their arms and expect because suddenly the light has come to them to find someone that is now willing to return love for a new or newly awakened love Niamh are so shocked and they can find they can't communicate. There are few white people that can communicate anything to illegals

or know anything about it or are in a position to know. How was the Negro to deal then. Who was his feelings a shame. There were several paths open to him. Perhaps the one most never events today is the mass overthrow or shame with the members of the mass strengthening each other. And that's when you use what you see in the picket lines and sit downs and all that because I was in Montgomery Alabama 1932 when I was touching teaching test. And the thought of going into a white department store and sitting down a fountain was I would no more think of that. I wouldn't step in front of a speeding train. It was just him. Suddenly an idea that while I don't think really they would have done anything. I think they would just quietly call the

police and put you in the same side. I thought well this negroes just gone crazy. There is another path. This is a redefinition of the past by discovering the more glorious past as it was imagined to have been in Africa. And don't think that young people will be taking away too much for the back muscles. You know we've made that scene before. Look through all the trouble you see as you know the only troubled youth is just so young. And there's so many things were made. You'd be surprise the Mondeo they tell you all the sins. But anyway I say back to

Africa sing. Marcus Garvey organized a million black Americans and although his goals were foodies the pride which stir which he stirred in dark hearts was real. I remember very vividly when Marcus Bhargavi had come to see Am I was a young man for them for it was back in the late 20s. There had been a parade down Second Avenue the main St. Lucie had abortions and thousands have followed their leaders their Messiah who was to lead them back to Africa and to freedom. The Honorable Marcus a radius Darby D.C. ad founder of the black designer's universal negro independence Association. You and I we say you you and I mean to your nigga and I. Well.

Well Marcus Garvey was a self eloquent self educated eloquent and fanatically zealot Jamaican in the parade there were a new group of women in the uniforms of the Black Cross nurses islands repartees the American motorcycle Corps the little didn't have any motorcyclists. Need no man wearing the uniform of the black eagle flying poor and in front. Of the RO African legions rode on horses. It was ludicrous and laughable but the black ones were deadly serious and the black man the laborers and servants had to pry. Which raises a demonstration out of the absurd and struck fear or admiration in the hearts of the watchers on the dark faces there were there was limited faith. Reflecting the completeness of living which is come to them when for the first time they have found pry and joy and

form film and in themselves and had cast off shame. Later on at the meeting at the Star Theatre. I've heard Garvey say Garvey deleter in told in deep resonant voice their slogan One God one aim one destiny forth to the Guardians. He was a savior a messiah. Who promised to snatch them from the edge of the abyss and there and turn their grief into greatness he had put steel in the spines of the negroes who had previously been ashamed of their color. I tried to tell my parents about it later but when I describe fast black women in tight border cycle pants the last. I had quickly stopped them by saying Don't

laugh. They were proud. This is the first time I've ever seen a group walking down the streets of a white city with pride and dignity. The God of the movement was the only real mass movement. American need rules have had and it was based on glorifying things black the gobby eyes were going to have Black Cross nurses rather than White Cross nurses. A black house rather than the White House a black star steamship line rather than a white star sea and ship line is a little ludicrous. Certainly but it fulfilled a deep hunger in the hearts of more than a million Americans need to hold a valid hunger you know hunger which still exists in the 30 or 35 years since carving that hunger has deep been been made more acute. If America does not allow the

negro to find pride in himself as an American then he will inevitably seek acceptance as a black man as for the Black Muslims their goals are just as foolish is garbage. But there appear they're appealing but they are appealing to the same hunger. They are on that ground. As to whether I would join them I wouldn't. Although it is a consummation devoutly to be wished I still hope for. Forgive me if I say I'm seeing the fulfillment of the American dream which would include all people no matter what color I have been in that up yet. James Baldwin writes to his nephew in and says Please try to remember

that what they believe as well as what they do cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear. There is no reason for you to try to become like white people. And there is no basis whatever for their important assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing nobody is that you must accept them. And I mean that first seriously you must accept them and accept them. Love for these innocent people will have no other hope. They are in effect still trapped in history which they do not understand and until they understand it they cannot be released from it. All of us imagine a great many of us have been talking about the

Negro is conscious of America now in this present political situation were an insane man has been nominated for president. Of the United States. Thank god or white people should certainly thank God. And I think God is a Negro that he has made so many anti negro remarks that he won't get a single negro remark except some by Brown and it was a life vote so that the needle now is not only conscious but good to be the salvation. Of America. Our failure to achieve a mature culture in which Negroes and white sunlight can accomplish some aspects of personality integration has within it the

seeds of political fascism. And if the emotionally strong created truncated lives of negroes lead many of them to give up a fruitless struggle and submit to the hard certainty of a harsh dictator many whites in their image too are longing for a meaning to their lives and for security which they have not been able to find. Act in a manner which would indicate that they too are longing for the scrawl of the cruel father who will dictate the functions of their lives. You see ladies and gentlemen I am not at all sanguine about our future White or Black in America. Now I'd like to go on to another ideology which is profoundly affected the American Eagle. The Communist Party

or the the American Communist Party in the United States. The commies seized upon the Scottsboro boys and the depression as its own opportunity to seek recruits among the group. According to Rayford Logan soon after World War One the commies sought to win the support of Negro workers north. However the communists six world Confederation made a fatal mistake when in 1980 it decreed to work toward the formation of a black nation within the United States. An overwhelming majority of Negroes had no more desire to settle in a separate nation than they had to go back to Africa. But the coming is sensing the propaganda that the Scots were of a trial stole the Scottsboro boys from the end of Lacy and made violent tag attacks on Dubois

and others. But since negroes mostly girls know the work of two boys and other leaders such as Walter White and since they had never heard of Marx or Lenin and also since they were fundamentally a lot of Americans to Spite this second class citizenship this communist maneuver one little coffin that even in 1934 after five years of repression and before the New Deal had begun to reach down to Negroes to a considerable measure only twenty five hundred negroes out of twenty four thousand Communist Party members were new United States. But quite apart quite apart from the success of the con to organize it they did provide

a tremendous stimulant to the thinking and writing of niggles first the Russian Revolution itself star of the civilized world. I don't have documentation but I'm sure that I will certainly when I first heard of the Russian Havner revolution. The thought entered my head. Governments that oppress need not always be that way. That social change was possible. The crime is failed because in the first place of their program all their opportunistic nature. But they did open up the needful to a world view and to the fact as I say that social institutions could be changed.

Richard Wright and the Alabama negro who had somehow talked a vision of freedom. There are incidentally about three or four four I think people now working on full scale books about Richard Wright. And I think he would his true place will be discovered in correspondence with all of them. And I think I think one is a Frenchman and others knew him in New York and we're all exchanging material. And I think the right will be re-evaluated. Right. Envisioned a world in which she could walk with dignity and he was seduced by the commies dream that in a sense that in a sense defeated day in one

sense it was a curious thing day with the communist On one hand they did give a World Vision. They did the help to you there is a saying you know you can take a man alum Alabama but you take can take Alabama out of the man. Well Dick came out of Mississippi but there was plenty of Mississippi left in Dick but the communists helped to rid him of that they did him that favor and given a world view. But they did him the dish service of having played just a mere pledge allegiance to the commies made a total commitment as they and some relations as you may then when you break that commitment your have the compulsion to fight against an institution to which players pledged your loyalty and ally and unfortunately for day

he spent after he left the cum party he spent a great deal of his time fighting them but to hear more about that one seminar which we have about right. Let me tell you NO WE DO YOU. What Dick wrote in 937. Now 937 is still in the Communist Party. But I want you to hear this because it shows the Commons put steel in his heart and gave this World Vision. Now I'm ready in reason from right in the new challenge 900 for 1937 in the lives of Negro writers must be found those materials and experiences which will create a meaningful picture of the world today. Many young writers have grown to believe that a Marxist analysis of society presents such a picture. It creates a picture which when placed before the eyes of the writer

should unify his personality organizes emotions but just him with a tense and Durant will to change the world and in turn. This change world will dialectic for a change a writer. Hence it is through a Marxist concept a reality in CIA and says society that the maximum degree of freedom in thought and feeling can be game for the negro writer. Furthermore this dramatic Marxist vision when consciously grants in Dao's a writer with a sense of dignity which no one of the vision can give. Ultimately it resources the writer his last charity that is his true role as a career of the world in which he lives and as a creator of itself and it is really a sad passage to know so

few years later. OK native son and it were found that he would not have not embraced a savior but he was being locked into a cage and revolted against the economy. Oh. I am concerned with the problems of the negro and with the past really a possibility of enriching the American culture. So Ibis act in some fashion for exam Mendus racial confrontation has taken place. Confrontation is an old an hour of word which is recently come to current use. It means a face to face meeting of people or peoples with conflicting interests ideas or values which must be resolved.

A confrontation may be resolved by synthesis of these conflicting ideologies or believe or confrontation may result in conflict leading to a void in isolation or violent confrontation is always a tense meaningful and fateful for libel me the snarls of death from me is the Texas PS. Chapter 18 verse 1 0 5. How much time do we have to convince the Americans that the war and the world that democracy does not mean wipe damnation and that much as Nat Hentoff says in his new power book which I commend to you a new equality. The negro needs to get himself into the high power position. We need laws and the continuation of picking line

demonstrations etc. to awaken our people. I like to quote to quote what Dick Wright wrote in his introduction to Dr. Dre thing in my book. He said well the negro and remember this was 15 years ago. Will the negro in the language of Andre Malraux find a meaning in his humiliation. Make his slums and his sweat shops his modern cathedrals out of which will be born a new consciousness that can guide him toward freedom. Or will he continue as he does today saying Joe will blight his society the questions ZM those slays me yet will I trust in it. This from Richard Wright was a rhetorical statement

long before he he had sense the dictates of history. If James Baldwin is support of the Nigora vote Richard Wright is is its prophet. In 1941 Wright wrote the text of a picture book which was both poorly and prophetic. I'm particularly pleased to close my mower of my remarks by reading it because part of it was written in my apartment in Chicago and he acknowledges. I'm proud to say my slight contribution in the preface. Twenty three years ago twenty three years ago different wrote we black folk our history our present being are a mirror of all the manifold

experiences in America. What we want what we represent what we endure a is what America is. If we black Sperry's America will perish. If America has forgotten our past then let her look. Into the mirror of her consciousness and she'll see the living past living in the present for our memories go back through our black folk of today through the recollections of our parents and through the tales of slavery told by our black grandparents to the time when none of us black or white lived in this fertile land. The differences between black and white folk are not blood or color and the ties that bind is deeper than those to separate us. The common road of hope upon which we all have traveled have brought us

into a stronger kinship than words dolls or little clothing. Look at us and know us and you will know yourselves far we are you. Looking back at you. From the dark mirror of our lives what do we black folks want we want what others have the right to share in the upward march of American life the only life we remember or have ever known. The Lords of the land say we will not grant this. We answer. We asked you to grant is nothing. We are winning our heritage the our toil and suffering is great. The bosses of the building say your problem is beyond solution. We answer. Our problem is being solved. We are crossing the line. You dared to cross though we paid in the calling of

death. The seasons of the plantations no longer dictates the lives of many of us. Hundreds of thousands of us are moving into the sphere of conscious history. We are with a new tad. We stand at the crossroads. We watch each new procession. The hut wires carry urgent appeal print compels us. Voices are speaking men are moving and we shall be with them. Which are 20. 80. T s.