In Alain Locke’s essay “Enter the New Negro” he states that “the Negro mind has leapt, so to speak, upon the parapets of prejudice and extended its cramped horizons. In so doing it has linked up with the growing group consciousness of the dark-peoples and is gradually learning their common interests” (Perry).

Here Locke is telling the reader that the “New Negro” is characterized by a state of consciousness and  a new understanding of racial conditions. As well as a new understanding of their identity as a black person in a white world. This implies that the New Negro sees that they no longer have to follow the tropes white society has placed upon them nor internalize or emulate the black characters created in the white mind.  Locke goes on to say “As one of our writers has recently put it: ‘It is imperative that we understand the white world in its relations to the nonwhite world’ “ (Perry).

This tells the reader that the New Negro is also characterized by a strategic outlook on the world. Understanding the white world in order to understand one’s own positionality as a black person.

Hubert Harrison was a working class immigrant, a fervent civil rights activist, and a leader of the Socialist party of New York. Harrison was also a founder of the New Negro Movement. He consistently emphasized the need “for working class people to develop class consciousness; for “Negroes” to develop race consciousness, self-reliance, and self-respect; and for all those he reached to challenge white supremacy and develop modern, scientific, critical, and independent thought as a means toward liberation”(Perry).

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.