Summary
This essay discusses the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City. This neighborhood was mainly populated by Jews and Italians in the 19th century. During the 20th-century Great Migration, large numbers of African Americans moved there. It was the epicenter of the 1920s and 1930s cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. The essay first describes the physical space and living conditions in Harlem. It then moves on to discuss the role of black leaders and the black press before moving onto the topic of religion and finally the relationship between Jewish people and African Americans.
Baldwin begins by saying that Harlem has changed very little from his parents’ generation to his own. The buildings are old, the streets crowded and dirty, the rents far too expensive compared to the rest of the city. Periodically, racism and inequality lead to riots, as in 1935 and 1943. Baldwin writes than when these periodic explosions occur, “speeches are made, committees are set up, investigations ensue.” Yet these attempts to right social wrongs and improve conditions never really change things. They are merely cosmetic changes, which Baldwin describes with the metaphor of make-up on a leper. Housing projects might be built, but only wealthy African Americans can afford to rent there.
The essay then moves on to the topic of black leaders. They are in an impossible position, Baldwin says. Some are self-serving, but even those who genuinely want to help are constrained in how much they are allowed to do: "Negro leaders have been created by the American scene, which thereafter works against them at every point." Certainly, some small changes are better than nothing. If a playground is built, at least children will not be hit by cars in the street. If schools are constructed this is good, because literacy is better than illiteracy. Yet Baldwin questions how much schools will prepare poor black children for life. The situation in Harlem cannot be fixed without structural, deep-seated change.
As for the “Negro press,” Baldwin describes it as sensational: focused on murders, rapes, and other juicy topics that sell papers. Yet the African-American press is no less sensational than the mainstream American white press. Baldwin then describes various newspapers, such as the highly sensationalist Amsterdam Star-News, or the more left-wing People’s Voice which features articles by blacklisted left-wing actor and musician Paul Robeson. Ebony and Our World are more like Life Magazine, focusing on unusual or otherwise noteworthy African Americans.
The main problem with the African-American press, Baldwin suggests, is that it uses the white press as its model. Its tone of sophistication and distance is unconvincing. For example, one editorial Baldwin mentions suggests that African Americans should be happy with their lot in life, since it is better than conditions in many other parts of the world. The editorial thus tells them to stop complaining and singing the blues. Baldwin responds: "It is simply impossible not to sing the blues, audibly or not, when the lives lived by Negroes are so inescapably harsh and stunted." He wants to be realistic about how bad conditions like those found in Harlem affect people. Despite these critiques of the press, Baldwin writes that it should not be used as a scapegoat. When the average intellectual level of American society is so low, how can one expect more from an already oppressed people?
Baldwin then touches on religion in Harlem. The neighborhood has more churches than the other ghettos of New York. Some people interpret this devotion to religion as indicating African-American simplicity, but Baldwin argues that this is far from the case. If one pays attention to the sermons in all the variety of churches, one common denominator is not sweetness but “a complete and exquisite fantasy [of] revenge.” The sermons focus on the theme of divine justice and punishment for the wicked. In this way, spirituality is used to suggest that all the wrongs committed by white people will be punished, as God is watching. The day of reckoning will come.
Baldwin then delves into “the Negro’s ambivalent relationship to the Jew.” On the one hand, he notes, many of the sermons and speeches given in black churches are based on the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible). The themes of Exodus, slavery, and liberation have been historically important to African Americans. Many African-American hymns and gospel songs focus on asking God for freedom. Of course, for Christians, the image of a suffering Jesus is also of crucial importance, but the sufferings and trials of the ancient Hebrews also provide important fuel for the black church.
The reason the relationship of African Americans to Jews is ambivalent or contradictory is that the Jews that they interact within their everyday lives in Harlem tend to be landlords, real estate agents, and other people who are seen as exploiting black people. This causes resentment against Jews and is combined with the larger antisemitism of American society. For African Americans, however, hating Jews is a way of expressing discontent with America as a whole. According to Baldwin, there is a sense that Jews, as a persecuted people, should “know better” than to exploit other persecuted groups.
In this way, Jews and African Americans are caught in a bind. Jews believe the widespread racist notion that African Americans are inferior, while the Jews that African Americans interact with reinforce the antisemitic notion that Jews are greedy. Yet there is a third group that benefits from this hostility between two American minorities: white Christians. Baldwin writes: "Here the American white Gentile has two legends serving him at once: he has divided these minorities and he rules."
Though Baldwin recounts arguing against antisemitic prejudice, he is not optimistic that this mutual hostility can be easily overcome. The conditions that reign in ghettos like Harlem create a bitterness and hatred that "defeat all efforts at interracial understanding." And so Jewish people become a scapegoat, just as white people in the South use African Americans as a scapegoat: "Georgia has the Negro and Harlem has the Jew." People are looking for a symbol for their hatred. It will take much more than the shared fact of suffering to get people to overcome this hate.
Analysis
Along with the previous essays in Notes of a Native Son, this essay was written when Baldwin was still in his twenties and helped to establish him as an important literary voice in the country. Baldwin grew up in Harlem, so he had personal insight into the conditions in the neighborhood. While he is critical both of black leaders and press, he continually moves out to the larger context. For example, he writes: "whatever contradictions, inanities, and political infantilism can be charged to [the Negro press] can be charged equally to the American press at large." Similarly, he notes that if aspects of African-American life can be critiqued, one must also admit “the fact that the white man's world, intellectually, morally, and spiritually, has the meaningless ring of a hollow drum and the odor of slow death." The rot starts from white American society and nothing in Harlem or elsewhere can truly be fixed without addressing the underlying problem.
Baldwin’s approach to the relations between Jews and African Americans ends up in a similar place. The conditions in Harlem and the larger context of racial oppression creates a “furious, bewildered rage” with which black children grow up. No appeals to mutual understanding can fix this, because oppression causes people to lash out. In this sense, "the Jew is caught in the American crossfire” and hated for being white. Baldwin compares poverty and racism to a “cancer that attacks the mind and warps it.” Until the situation that causes this is fixed, there is no hope of changing “Negro-Jewish relations” for the better.
