Comparison of the writings of Hoyt W. Fuller and Trey Ellis on the idea of a “Black Aesthetic” provides a reader with valuable insight into the development of what ultimately was the quest for black racial upward mobility. Fuller’s article, “Towards A Black Aesthetic,” first establishes what exactly this idea, this “Black Aesthetic,” was in the 1960s, while Ellis’ article, written nearly twenty years later, builds upon Fuller’s definition in order to defy his predictions about the future of the movement and to rearticulate what Ellis ultimately terms “The New Black Aesthetic.” Besides the obvious fact that Ellis’ writing is informed by the ideas presented in Fuller’s article, these articles also provide a clear view of the ongoing and increasingly important nature of the desire for black racial upward mobility in literature and the arts heralded by movements like that of the Black Aesthetic from the perspective of the black writer.
In his essay, “Towards A Black Aesthetic,” first published in The Critic in 1968, Fuller focuses on the ways in which white literary criticism prevents black racial upward mobility by revealing the problematic nature of the current system of literary criticism in which white critics evaluate the writing of black writers. According to Fuller, the fact that “violence against the black minority is in-built in the established American society” and “Conscious and unconscious white racism is everywhere, infecting all the vital areas of national life,” means that such violent and racist tendencies are also present in the critiques visited upon black literature by white critics (Fuller 199; 200). As Fuller points out, this inherent racism is apparent in the popular American literary criticism myths about black writing: the idea that black literature has been “favored by a ‘double standard’ which judges it less stringently” than that of white writers, when in reality it is white literature that is critiqued less stringently and accepted more readily, as Fuller writes:
During any year, hundreds of mediocre volumes of prose and poetry by white writers are published, little noted, and forgotten. At the same time, the few creative works by black writers are seized and dissected and, if not deemed the “highest” literary quality, condemned as still more examples of the failure of black writers to scale the rare heights of literature. (202)
Such sentiments are also present, as Fuller points out, in the comments of white literary critics themselves, such as those made by the poet Louis Simpson:
“I am not sure it is possible for a Negro to write well without making us aware he is a Negro,” he wrote. “On the other hand, if being a Negro is the only subject, the writing is not important.” (200)
Important here is not just the content of Simpson’s statement, but the fact that, as Fuller asserts, “The white reader will… find that clear and acceptable enough,” due to the common understanding of “Negro life” as having neither “universal values” nor “universal implications” (201). This ideology explicitly prevents black Americans from achieving racial upward mobility due to the fact that black Americans are a minority to the white population in this country. The salience of the above statement with white readers, writers, and critics alike prevents any of them, and therefore prevents the majority, from viewing black literature in the positive light necessary to allow this writing to serve as a tool of black racial upward mobility.
The solution to such problematic, white interpretations of black literature, according to “Towards A Black Aesthetic,” is ultimately the journey towards the Black Aesthetic-more specifically, for black writers to keep writing, regardless of the consequences and to establish a structure of black literary critics within the American literary culture, as these actions will shift the predominant perceptions and control of the white majority into the hands of members of the black minority. As Fuller writes, “The black writer… has wasted much time and talent… seeking an identity that can only do violence to his sense of self” (202). Instead, black writers must forge on, continuing the “journey towards the Black Aesthetic,” despite the fact that the Black Aesthetic movement, as Fuller writes, “will be reviled as ‘racism-in-reverse,’ and its writers labeled ‘racists,'” (199). Black writers must consciously decide that “white racism will no longer exercise its insidious control over his work” (200). With regard to critiquing the literary products of these “new” black writers that Fuller calls for, the hope is for the emergence of “new black critics,” able to “articulate and expound the new aesthetic and eventually set in motion the long overdue assault against the restrictive assumptions of the white critics” (204). These new black critics, Fuller asserts, will have the responsibility of approaching the works of black writers “with the knowledge that white readers-and white critics-cannot be expected to recognize and to empathize with the subtleties and significance of black style and technique,” thus affording blacks with a greater opportunity for racial upward mobility (205).
Trey Ellis’ article “The New Black Aesthetic,” published in a 1989 issue of the black literary journal Callaloo, discusses the both the advantages of and self-created barriers erected by black writers and artists of the late eighties and early nineties with regard to the ongoing struggle for black racial upward mobility. As August Wilson is quoted as saying in Ellis’ article, “What blacks were doing in the 60s is coming to some fruition… We have the framework and the orientation to take things further” (238). The fact that these members of the new, yet ongoing, effort to achieve black racial upward mobility have so many advantages over their forbearers, yet are still held back to an extent by certain ideological issues, highlights the increasing importance and ongoing nature of this desire for upward mobility.
According to Ellis, one of the advantages, or tools, possessed by the members of what he terms the “New Black Aesthetic” movement is the fact that many of them are children of Civil Rights workers and black nationalists (236). This means that they have inherited a “postliberated aesthetic,” or, as Ellis writes:
Though even they [the parents of movement members] themselves might not have arrived at the promised land completely freed from a slave mentality, they thoroughly shielded us [NBA proponents] from its vestiges. (236)
The fact that these members of the New Black Aesthetic movement were shielded from the influence of this “slave mentality” so often engendered by black Americans allows these writers and artists to move beyond the shock over and obsession with racism that was so characteristic of previous efforts to attain black racial upward mobility. As Ellis writes, “For us, racism is a hard and little-changing constant that neither surprises nor enrages” (239-240). Arguably, this belief-that while racism does exist, it is not “an excuse” for failure or a lack of action-allows members of the New Black Aesthetic to focus their efforts elsewhere in pursuit of upward racial mobility, rather than being weighed down by the ideology of racism (240). Another advantage of this new generation of black literary and artistic activists is their increasing numbers; as Ellis writes, “Yet as a movement we finally have the numbers to leverage [our] point of view” (237). Where previous movements, such as that discussed by Fuller in “Towards A Black Aesthetic,” failed due to sheer lack of numbers, this “New Black Aesthetic” has the possibility to succeed with is “large body of the like-minded” (234). In addition to the aforementioned advantages of the New Black Aesthetic artists and writers, these individuals also benefit from the fact that “today’s popular culture is guided by blacks almost across the board” (237). As Ellis points out:
Between Eddie Murphy and Bill Cosby… Spike Lee and Robert Townsend, playwright August Wilson and poet Rita Dove (1987’s Pulitzer Prize winners), novelist Toni Morrison (1988’s Pulitzer winner), Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Prince, and the explosion of rap artists, the world is not only now accustomed to black faces in the arts, but also hungers for us. (237)
The fact that the artists and writers of the New Black Aesthetic are working during a period when black culture is the “dominant culture’s ‘flavor of the month'” provides these black individuals with a great opportunity, as Ellis asserts, for self-promotion and acceptance in literature and the arts not previously available to other proponents of black racial upward mobility (238).
According to Ellis, members of the New Black Aesthetic movement, despite having a number of advantages over their predecessors-those writers hailed by Hoyt W. Fuller in the article discussed above, for example-still face obstacles in their quest for black racial upward mobility. Ellis discusses in particular two of these obstacles, the first of which being the fact that, in the author’s view, “still too many blacks belie their fears of inferiority by always demanding propagandistic positivism,” which often stifles the creativity of black writers and artists necessary to support such an important and ongoing movement (238). The second obstacle to the movement supported by the New Black Aesthetic that Ellis addresses in “The New Black Aesthetic” is the idea that this movement is not necessarily open to all members of the black community. Ellis writes:
It’s going to be a real challenge for people in our little group to make sure that our movement isn’t a little elitist, avant-garde thing,” says Lisa Jones. However, at least for now, that is exactly what it is. (240)
While Ellis does not condemn the New Black Aesthetic for being elitist or an “avant-garde thing,” it is clear from Lisa Jones’ comment above that other members of the movement are critical of this characteristic. The idea of fracturing the black community, of placing the writers and artists above other black individuals, does not sit well with members like Jones, arguably due to the fact that the success of the new movement relies at least in part on its large numbers-numbers only decreased by segmentation of the black community.
That two well-known, influential black writers address, in two distinctly different time periods separated by nearly two decades, the same desire of the black community for racial upward mobility expressed through black writers and artists attests to the ongoing and increasing importance of this desire within black culture. Such a strong textual connection between “The New Black Aesthetic,” which clearly references and is informed by “Towards A Black Aesthetic,” and this earlier article also speaks to the historical development of this movement and desire within the black community-the way in which the new proponents increasingly feed off of the work of the previous in an effort to keep the movement alive until the desire is satiated.
Ellis, Trey. “The New Black Aesthetic.” Callaloo 38 (1989): 233-243.
“ethos, n.” Dictionary.com Unabridged. 2006. Random House, Inc. 05 Dec. 2006 .
Fuller, Hoyt W. Towards a Black Aesthetic.” Within the Circle: An Anthology of African American Literary Critics from theHarlemRenaissance to the Present. Ed. Angelyn Mitchell.
Rowell, Charles H. “DIAMONDS IN A SAWDUST PILE: Notes to Black Southern Writers.” Callaloo 1 (1976): 3-9.
