The New Negro in the "Black Mecca"

The source that I chose to do a close reading on in my discussion of the New Negro as it pertains to my thesis is a paper written by Lourdes Ropero Lopez, entitled "Some of All of Us in You: Intra-Racial Relations, Pan Africanism and Diaspora in Paule Marshall's The Fisher King". This reading looks closely not only at Paule Marshall's work, but also examines the intra-racial conflicts that took place within the black community in 1920's Harlem. Harlem at this time was deemed to be the new "Black Mecca" and cultural capital for African Americans. There was a great influx of Blacks coming from the South as well as abroad in order to gain better opportunities that they were not being afforded elsewhere. With the birth of the Harlem Renaissance, in which Black artists, writers, musicians, singers, and dancers were steadily emerging, a New Negro in turn was being born. Blacks were given the opportunity to establish their own culture, identity, and freedom of expression. And thus, Harlem was the site in which this transformation of Blackness took place.

However, in examining the ways in which Harlem was the "Black Mecca" for many, it is equally important to consider the ways in which it possibly, was not. One of the reasons Blacks fled the South was due to racial discrimination that they constantly faced. In my thesis and analysis of Harlem as the Black Mecca, I consider the ways in which factors such as discrimination, a strong component that compelled Blacks to flee from the South, was still an issue that had to be faced in their new home; Harlem. Only this time, it was not only inter-racial discrimination they faced, but intra-racial discrimination as well. In this close reading of Lopez's paper, we are further able to see how the tension and conflict of race within the 1920s Harlem Black community was one of many other reasons why 1.) Harlem may not necessarily have been the "Mecca" for Blacks that people have often proclaimed it to be. And 2.) If the emergence was a redefinition of African Americans in Harlem, how does this New Negro identity apply to, or go against, others in the greater Black community that African Americans were constantly in conflict with, such as Afro-Caribbeans and those from the West Indies?

Lopez states, that "The post war economic boom attracted the migration of Afro-Caribbeans to New York in the 1920s, which coincided with the so-called Great Migration of Southern Blacks to the Northern metropolis...the relationship that developed between native and immigrant Blacks was nonetheless marred by ambivalence". He later goes on to state that African-Americans "...stereotyped Afro-Caribbeans as 'stingy', 'craftier than the Jew', 'Brittish', or 'clannish'". While Afro-Caribbeans thought Blacks at the time to be a "...low status group in a white society in which they were inevitably associated on racial grounds". With these conflicting ideologies that pitted these two different groups within the same diaspora against each other, where exactly does the New Negro come forth? The concept of the New Negro seems to be applicable to Black Americans that were coming from the South, and able to redefine themselves after establishing a new life in the North. But, what of the story of the Afro-Caribbeans who did not come from the South, but instead came from a place from which they were in fact the majority, had attained an education, and furthermore, already had a great sense of racial pride that Black Americans were just recently able to develop through the creation of the Black Negro? If the New Negro was not necessarily something that Afro-Caribbeans and those from the West Indies could claim, it really is not much of a surprise that due to different national histories, the Black community in Harlem overall would experience some intra-racial discrimination towards each other. Thus, if that intra-racial discrimination was taking place, if the New Negro identity was one that some were able to claim but not others, can one really still claim that Harlem was the Black Mecca in which anyone that was apart of the African Diaspora was able to come to, live within, and take advantage of all the opportunities that they did not have elsewhere, and still ultimately get along? Possibly. But I argue not. Ropero states that "...competition over the scarce resources of a segregated community on the one hand, and cooperation on political and social levels on the other characterize the relationship that developed between the African-American and the Caribbean communities in the New York ghettoes".  With this, arguments of how the New Negro identity were for all and not just some, as well as how Harlem was still the Black Mecca despite these tensions is questionable, and will further be analyzed in the remainder of my paper.