Art as propaganda: didacticism and lived experience

Alain Locke in his forward to his book The New Negro recognizes that "there is a growing realization that in social effort the co-operative basis [between whites and blacks] must supplant long-distance philanthropy." In addition, Locke argues that the only safeguard for mass relations in the future must be provided in the carefully maintained contacts of the enlightened minorities of both race groups [emphasis added].(28) What is important to emphasize here is that Locke, like [Du Bois], seems to have relied on art to accomplish the miracle of integrating blacks into the larger American culture. Indeed, one can read Locke when he calls for the need of a "revaluation by white and black alike of the Negro in terms of his artistic endowments and cultural contributions, past and prospective," as another deployment of art as Propaganda.(29) Alain Locke, according to David Levering Lewis in his book The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, had an "unsurpassed" influence in "the Harlem Renaissance." Indeed, according to Lewis, Locke "advanced the careers of Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, [Claude McKay], Richmond Barthe, Aaron Douglas, and [Langston Hughes]."(30) However, as a "virtual chamberlain to the imperious Charlotte Osgood Mason (`Godmother'), whose great wealth was bestowed with Locke's advice" on other African American artists "on condition that they remain faithful to her notion's of black creativity," Locke seems to have a great influence on African American art.(31) One could argue that for a "critic, philosopher" and "teacher" like Locke, the racial problem of African Americans can be more effectively argued and discussed from an economic and class point of view.(38) However, Locke also uses a similar didactic approach in his discussion of art. Locke in his article, "The New Negro" explains that the "objectives" of "the Negro to-day" are "those of his outer life." These objectives, according to Locke are "none other than the ideals of American institutions and democracy."(39) In other words, like privileged white Americans, African American individuals wish to accomplish the democratic objectives white Americans wish accomplish. What is ironic here is that Locke seems to bracket or limit African Americans' social objectives in a matrix of the general American democratic ideal. In other words, Locke imposes the task of creating an individual African-American "inner life" on black individuals, despite racial discrimination. Indeed, he explains that