Not all African-Americans are Richard Wright

This post may be a bit of a tangent, but it’s as good a time as any with all four writers assigned for this reading being African-American (I think.) In the Ralph Ellison profile, it’s noted that Ellison was troubled by the way Invisible Man was being read. He wanted it be read not as a statement about African-Americans, but rather “simply as a novel” (1210). The profile also mentions that Irving Howe, who criticized Ellison’s lack of devotion to “the Negro cause,” believed that “African-Americans should write social protest novels about the tragedy of black ghetto life” (1210).

Does that statement strike anybody else as incredibly short-sighted? Howe has a single-minded concern that he pushes without considering the full ramifications of what he’s saying. Besides, it’s incredibly presumptuous of Howe, the son of Jewish immigrants according to his handy Wikipedia page, to criticize an African-American for not devoting his fiction to African-American causes. In an attempt to combat racism and social inequality, Howe contributes to both instead. To demand that all African-Americans write about a particular thing, no matter what that thing is, is a racist act whether it’s intended to be or not. Howe (and other critics) wouldn’t presume that all white people think exactly alike and have exactly the same concerns, but that’s exactly what is implied about African-Americans in such a demand. Not all African-Americans want to make statements about “the Negro cause”; some, like Ellison, just want to tell a story. When people refuse to allow this by reading those statements into the works when they’re not intended, they limit the African-American writer’s creative freedom, which is incredibly ironic.

Alice Walker’s Everyday Use  also demonstrates the way certain behavior or attitudes are forced on African-Americans. Dee wants to take all of Grandma Dee’s quilts to hang them and appreciate their history, while Maggie would actually make use of them, saying “I can ‘member Grandma Dee without the quilts” (1536). Dee becomes frustrated and claims the narrator and Maggie don’t understand their heritage. From Maggie’s statement, the implication is apparent: they can remember their heritage without revering objects for the sole purpose of appearing to remember their heritage. People aren’t all the same, and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to everything. For some people, those quilts might truly help them remember their heritage and they might desire them for that reason, and that’s fine. But it’s also okay if they want to remember their heritage another way or even to not think about it much at all and just worry about the present.  Similarly, if an African-American writer doesn’t want to focus on the past or the social problems of the present, we should extend to them the same courtesy we would any other writer and read their works as written, not expecting them to make statements they don’t want to make. And just because an African-American writer doesn’t want to write about their heritage or current social problems doesn’t mean they don’t care about those things. Is a white writer who doesn’t write about murder prevention secretly a serial killer? No, and nor is an African-American writer who doesn’t write about African-American social problems a sell-out, traitor, or anything else they unfortunately get accused of.

 As English majors who spend plenty of time interpreting texts, it is important for us to remember to read texts as they are written, and not expect every African-American writer we come across to be making a statement about “the Negro cause.” (I would love to hear Howe’s explanation of what exactly the Negro cause is, as if every African-American has one indisputable goal to accomplish with no variance.)