Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism.

This chapter provides a background to African American history, “the fundamental concerns of African American race theorists” (313), and their applications to literary texts. A dominant theme of this chapter is Literary Analysis as a Form of Social Justice, as these modes of analysis highlight the racism of canonical literary works and valorize the contributions of Black Americans in literature.

Racial Issues and African American Literary History

Tyson notes that throughout most of American history, Black American experiences have been excluded from the dominant narrative. Tyson then defines key terms:

• Racialism is “the belief in racial superiority, inferiority, and purity based on the conviction that moral and intellectual characteristics, just like physical characteristics, are biological properties that differentiate the races” (314).

• Racism is the “systemic discriminatory” actions taken against a race perceived as inferior.

• Institutional racism (or systemic/structural racism) is the practice of racism through widespread policy or practice. One example of this is environmental racism, wherein governments, for example, locate waste dumps in predominantly Black or brown neighborhoods. Another example of institutional racism can be found in the literary canon, which consists of predominantly white authors.

• Internalized racism is the adoption of racist beliefs about one’s race perpetuated by a racist society. One example of this is manifest in colorism, or the bigoted belief that light-skinned Black people are superior to darker-skinned Black people.

• “Double consciousness” or “double vision” is a term coined by W. E. B. DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk (1903) to describe how African Americans are aware “of belonging to two conflicting cultures,” that of Africa and that of Europe (as “imposed” through white culture in America; 317).

Tyson describes how the state of double consciousness is present in Black American language. For instance, depending on the audience, a Black person might choose whether to use African American Vernacular English (AAVE) or not. Tyson compares “Yet Do I Marvel” by Countee Cullen and “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes, two poets of the Harlem Renaissance, as an example of how these choices manifest in literature. Cullen uses images from Greek mythology and formal English in his poem as a form of protest “against the racist assumption of African inferiority” (317), whereas Hughes writes in AAVE to highlight the validity of Black language as a medium for poetic expression. Tyson notes that these are poetic as well as political choices.

Tyson argues that a key concern for Black writers historically has been their “social role […] in a racist society” (318). During the era of enslavement, enslaved African Americans learned to read and write poetry and autobiographical accounts to demonstrate their “humanity” to white racists. During the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, Black writers focused on cultural criticism and problematized the use of “[w]hite critical theories” for interpreting “Black texts” (319) 

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., while critiquing the instability of identity posited by deconstruction, recognizes the value of some elements of “European American theories” for criticism (319). He and other Black theorists argue that Black literature is “distinctive,” a tacit argument against the “universality” of literature proposed by Eurocentric theories. This distinctiveness is borne of the Afrocentricity or essential Blackness of Black literary texts, such as the African roots of Br’er Rabbit African American folk tales.

Recent Developments: Critical Race Theory

This section is a summary of the key tenets of critical race theory. Tyson opens with a discussion of how despite legal frameworks prohibiting racism, racial injustice in policing, housing, banking, etc. persists. Beginning in the 1970s, legal scholars like Derrick A. Bell, Jr., began to develop critical race theory to critique constitutional law and the failure of legal frameworks to address racial injustices. Its methodology is applicable to other domains, including literature.

Basic Tenets [of Critical Race Theory] Explained

1. Everyday racism (or casual racism): This term refers to racist beliefs or behaviors in social interactions, like assumptions that Black students are inferior, police assumptions of Black criminality, etc. This form of racism is often cumulative and causes material and emotional damage to Black people.

2. Interest convergence: Racism is perpetuated because it benefits white people’s interests and is alleviated when it does not, such as when schools were desegregated via Brown v. Board of Education (1954) not out of sympathy for Black people but to improve America’s image abroad during the Cold War.

3. The social construction of race: Racial categories are contingent and socially determined, not biologically defined, as demonstrated by how racial categories on the US Census have shifted over time to accommodate new social understandings of race. For instance, before 2000, it was not possible to select multiple racial categories on the US Census.

4. Differential racialization: Delgado and Stefancic argue that “the dominant society racializes […] different minority groups [in different ways] at different times, in response to [its] shifting needs” (327). This means that racist stereotypes and their categories shift over time. For instance, during World War II, racist beliefs about Japanese people shifted due to the US going to war with Japan, resulting in a racist stereotype that they were untrustworthy, leading to Japanese internment policies.

5. Intersectionality: Race is one aspect of a complex web of identity that includes gender, class, etc. People may experience discrimination on the basis of one or more elements of those identities, e.g., a poor, Black lesbian might experience discrimination on the basis of class, race, gender, and/or sexuality.

6. Voice of color: Critical race theorists argue that people of color have more direct experiences of racism and therefore their views should be privileged in discourses about race and racism. However, this does not mean that all members of a racial group are a monolith who experience and understand racism in the same way.

Tyson then describes some of the key issues that critical race theorists address:

1. White privilege: As defined by Delgado and Stefancic, white privilege is “the myriad of social advantages, benefits, and courtesies that come with being a member of the dominant race” (330). Peggy McIntosh’s essay “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” (1990) is a commonly cited list of these privileges. Some examples of white privilege are not having to speak of one’s race or not worrying if mistakes will be seen as a reflection of “racial inferiority.” To counter this, white people need to examine their “unconscious or unintentional racist behavior” (332).

2. The problem with liberalism: Critical race theorists argue that the incremental approaches favored by liberal political systems are insufficient to address racial injustices. For instance, the progress of Brown v. Board of Education in integrating schools was largely undermined by exclusionary zoning policies, white flight, and property-tax-linked educational funding structures. She notes that right-wing extremism and conservatism are an even greater threat to racial equality than liberalism.

3. Racial realism: This refers to the belief that racism can only be overcome through changing personal beliefs via education, advocacy, etc. rather than through legal structures. This belief is articulated in the essay “Racial Realism” by Derrick A. Bell, Jr., which assesses the failures of legal approaches to antiracism as seen, for example, in the co-optation by white people of affirmative action policies intended to help Black people.

African American Criticism and Literature

While the definition of the “African American literary tradition” is contested (336), it is generally accepted that major themes in this domain of literature are different forms of racism and oppression as well as celebrating African American achievements and culture. The two primary poetic or stylistic forms of this literature are orality, or representations of spoken language, and folk motifs that connect to African or African American cultural history, like the figure of the trickster or the practice of folk crafts.

The Signifying Monkey by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., focuses on the practice of “signifying” in Black culture, which is the practice of “giving your opinion about another person […] without saying explicitly what you mean” (338). In African American literature, texts signify through “copying, altering, or parodying one another’s literary devices” (338). Gates analyzes the works Native Son and Black Boy by Richard Wright and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison as an example of this process. Wright, a naturalist, created straightforward, hyper-realistic representations of Black suffering, whereas Ellison, a “modernist,” used figurative language and ambiguity to the same ends. Ellison’s work “signifies upon Wright” to express their differences (338). For instance, while Wright’s protagonist Bigger Thomas is physically manifest but silent, Ellison’s protagonist in Invisible Man is “invisible” and created entirely of voice.

In Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature, Houston A. Baker, Jr., analyzes the connection between the blues, “an African American folk art” (339), and Black literature. Baker argues that blues often has a “double theme,” one overt spiritual theme that is undergirded by the material, economic theme, and that this structure can be seen in many works of African American literature, such as the autobiography of Frederick Douglass.

The emphasis for Black women writers is on representations of the fullness of their identities (rather than in minor, stereotyped parts) and often includes themes that address the intersection of sexism and racism that they face in real life and in their representations in culture. Mary Helen Washington identifies three types of representations of Black women throughout history used by Black women writers:

• Suspended woman: from works set in the 19th and early 20th century, portrayed as “oppressed by men and society” with few options (341), e.g., Nannie in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)

• Assimilated woman: from works set in the 1940s and 1950s, portrayed as deracinated from African American culture through assimilating with white culture, e.g., Geraldine in The Bluest Eye

• Emergent woman: from works set in the 1960s, portrayed as aware of her oppression and capable of charting a new path, often after a catalytic traumatic event, e.g., Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God

Tyson argues for the inclusion of a fourth typology, the “liberated woman,” who knows and values herself, like Shug Avery in The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982).

African American women writers often use the “poetics” of a Black female narrator or point of view and imagery of the domestic space (e.g., the kitchen) and appearance (e.g., hairstyles). Of particular importance is “the complex psychological, social, and economic dynamics of Black women’s self-definition” (342).

African American literary criticists also provide insights on white American literature. Toni Morrison, in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and Literary Imagination, analyzes how white literature creates an “Africanist presence in American history” that is predicated on white stereotypes, misunderstandings, prejudices, etc. about African and African American culture and people (342). 

For instance, Morrison argues that Black characters in white American texts are used to symbolize and embody “illegal sexuality, fear of madness, expulsion, [and] self-loathing” and as a foil for and/or to valorize white characters (342), like the Black crewman in To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway (1937). The character rarely speaks except to complain of his pain during a dangerous moment, while the white protagonist acts bravely, emphasizing the courageousness of the white character in contrast.

Some Questions African American Critics Ask About Literary Texts

Tyson provides a series of questions that summarize African American critical approaches to literature (345):

1. What are the work’s “racial politics”?

2. How does the work use African American poetics?

3. To what extent does the work contribute to the African American literary tradition?

4. How does the work illustrate intersectionality?

5. To what extent does the work use Africanist tropes?

But Where’s Harlem? An African American Reading of The Great Gatsby

Although F. Scott Fitzgerald is known for detailed accuracy in his works, his depiction of the culture of Jazz Age New York does not include an important generator of the culture of that time: the work, art, and music of the Harlem Renaissance. Tyson argues that this is a way that racism “can inform a literary work” by “manipulating” the setting (346). The Great Gatsby is set in the summer of 1922 in Manhattan and Long Island but includes no mention of Harlem (a neighborhood in Manhattan), where the Harlem Renaissance, a Black art movement, was in progress. 

Tyson contrasts this erasure with the omnipresence of Prohibition and its associated organized crime and memories of World War I throughout the novel. She also notes that Fitzgerald’s descriptions of fashion, music, “trendy consumer items” (349), and reading materials are largely accurate to the time period but include no mention of the cultural products of Harlem, like the jazz music being created there. 

Finally, she notes that the placenames, particularly of Manhattan, are “so specifically located that we could probably find our way to them” (349). However, even when their cab likely goes through Harlem, the novel contains no mention of it. She argues that Harlem’s omission from The Great Gatsby is at odds with the massive, and very trendy, cultural production coming from that neighborhood in the summer of 1922, like the hit African American musical that summer, Shuffle Along. This cultural output would have been familiar to white New Yorkers like the character of Nick Carraway, but he never mentions any members of the “New Negro Movement” or their work.

The only depictions of Black characters in The Great Gatsby are in small, parodic parts that reflect racist stereotypes. For instance, when Nick sees three fashionable Black men in a limousine, he derogatorily refers to them as “bucks.” Otherwise, the New York of The Great Gatsby is devoid of Black people. Tyson notes that Fitzgerald only depicts white people playing or composing jazz in his novel, which is counter to the historic reality that Black people invented and drove the form’s production. Tyson argues that Fitzgerald would have been familiar with Black cultural production due to his time in New York City and familiarity with Black Americans in Paris.

Tyson attributes these depictions and omissions to Fitzgerald’s historically documented racism, as shown by many of his biographers and exemplified in his positive response to his friend Carl Van Vechten’s novel about Harlem, N***** Heaven. 

Tyson concludes that it is ironic that The Great Gatsby is taken as a faithful document of 1920s American culture when it omits the people who set the tone for much of that culture due to the author’s racism.

Questions for Further Practice: African American Approaches to Other Literary Works

Tyson provides model questions to guide African American critical literary analysis. These questions explore how concepts such as the African American literary tradition and critical race theory can deepen a reader’s understanding of texts. Topics include the following (358):

1. The female characters in The Color Purple or Their Eyes Were Watching God and their relationship to Mary Helen Washington’s theory of recurring archetypes of African American women in literature

2. The themes of cultural heritage and economic survival in The Piano Lesson by August Wilson and how they relate to Houston Baker’s theories about this dualism in African American cultural products

3. The African American literary tradition and The Bluest Eye, with a particular focus on its poetics

4. The application of critical race theory to Invisible Man, focusing on characterization and plot

5. The “Africanist presence” in Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, particularly regarding the representation of Black characters