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Essay / The Complex Impact of the Harlem Renaissance on Racial and Gender Roles
Table of ContentsInfluence and role of the movement in African American historyThe Harlem Renaissance - a defeat in the fight for women's rightsChallenges and contradictionsConclusionThe Harlem Renaissance occurred in the early 20th century. It was during this time that many Africans moved to New York and developed a community called Harlem. It was also known as the Golden Age of African Americans because at this time African cultures were beginning to flourish, especially the artistic side of these African Americans. Some have also called this era the New Negro Movement. This movement may seem like a very successful movement for African Americans, however, this was not the case in certain aspects of society regarding gender role and race. This article will analyze the impact of the Harlem Renaissance on gender roles as well as race. The Harlem Renaissance is considered the golden age of African-American cultures. However, this movement has both positive and negative impacts on African American society regarding race and gender roles. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayInfluence and Role of the Movement in African American HistoryThe Harlem Renaissance is known as a successful movement in the history of Africa, but was not successful enough to give African Americans the same respect and equality as whites. For example, in the short story “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston, we see the female main character Delia Jones as a washerwoman who washes white people's clothes. We know this when her husband Sykes said to her, "Ah, I put up with you over and over again for keeping white people's clothes out of the house." Zora Neale Hurston was one of the important figures of the Harlem Renaissance. It focuses on the struggles of the female character in this story, but as we read this we could see that even if African Americans were freed, they would still work for white people. In this quote we see that Delia's husband is angry with her because she washes white people's clothes. However, this does not seem to affect Delia because "she continued her work" and it was a way for her to earn money. Furthermore, in the journal of Allen Dunn and George Hutchinson, they state that the Harlem Renaissance failed to give African Americans a place in American society when they state: "According to its critics, "l The movement's "failure" extended from the alleged weakness of its artistic achievements to its inability to bring about significant change in the position of African Americans in American society. Here, Dunn and Hutchinson acknowledge the failure of the Harlem Renaissance's achievements. They claimed that the movement failed to bring about significant change because, although artistic cultures were primarily focused on it, it remained weak and the movement was therefore unable to place African Americans in the same society as African Americans. Whites. Matthew N. Hannah expanded on this idea by stating that "in many ways his work combatted misrepresentations, stereotypes, and shoddy scientific studies of African American life by white social scientists." Here, Hannah argues that African American life has been misrepresented by white social scientists. Earlier in his journal, he mentioned that "racial uplift rested on cultural production that would showcase black genius, and on the emerging science of life-oriented sociologyblack as an object worthy of study. He asserts that to place African Americans in American society, their lives were studied as if they were “an object to be studied.” He uses the term “object” to emphasize that the lives of African Americans were studied in terms of how researchers would conduct their research on various things. He compares the lives of African Americans to things that can be researched. Dunn and Hutchinson claimed that African Americans were incapable of being integrated into American society and Hannah was, claiming that their lives were being researched in order to be placed in American society. The relationship between these two articles is that since African Americans could not be placed in American society, they were the subject of research. These two articles may also relate to Hurston's short story "Sweat". Additionally, because of how African Americans were viewed by whites, they would take advantage of any opportunity to change their color identity to have the same rights as whites. For example, Barbra Chin wrote a journal titled "It's a Funny Thing About 'Passing': A Discourse Analysis of Nella Larsen's Passing and the New Politics of Black Identity," where she analyzed the novel by Nella Larsen. She said one of the characters had been mistaken for white, but did not correct the driver when she said: "Irene enters the Drayton, a whites-only hotel, after her taxi driver taken for a white woman and she does not correct. him. It is here, when she herself momentarily passes for white, that she reacts with such disdain to the idea of passing.” The Harlem Renaissance - a defeat in the fight for women's rights According to Elyse Demaray and Lori Landay, “The Harlem Renaissance was considered a men's movement; we immediately think of Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer as representatives of this period – and not of Nella Larsen, Jessie Fauset, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Gwendolyn Bennett or Marita Bonner. Additionally, according to Jenny Hyest "Although Anne Spencer has been considered one of the most important female poets of the Harlem Renaissance, less attention has been paid to her role as an important innovator of American modernism." . She also asserts that "together, these three poems tell a complex story about how normative masculinity and femininity are constituted through their binarized relationship to vulnerability." She also claimed that "Spencer thus highlights how these traditions and conventions fail to protect women." African American women were also categorized by whites. For example, women of color were seen as "images of mammy and tragic mulatto persist in representations of black people fashioned in stories and songs." A “mama” was a colored nanny who took care of white children, while a “mulatto” was a woman of mixed race: one colored parent and the other white. Mayberry asserts that "Continuing the white southern projection of the mama as cook and housekeeper, always caring for her people, oral tradition denies her harmlessness and presents her as 'cunning, prone to poisoning her master and not at all pleased with his fate.” . This mother refutes any form of degradation associated with motherhood and gives this role the dignity and responsibility which are legacies of the African image of the mother as a symbol of the creative forces of the earth. The tragic mulatto also appears in slave narratives, but there is little romance in the stories. All the advantages that the mulatto woman could have because of her ties to, 33(2), 219-232.