John’s observation that black studies departments seem to him to focus on racism, to the exclusion of other (worthier, positive) aspects of black history in the US, identifies a problem shared with other university departments with “studies” in their name. Women’s studies, for example, focus on discrimination against women in western society. These departments have been aptly called “grievance studies” because of their focus on discrimination against members of the group being “studied”.
Love your stuff Glenn and John. I doubt there will be a real revival anytime soon because so many of these so called artists are just over indulged parasites that have been getting ridiculous praise from the education bureaucracy, the welfare state and the Democratic Party. No doubt they will throw paint in canvas, write something that rhythms or repeat a few lines in a play.
But real art is earned and not given out for Diversity, Inclusion and Equity.
Hi Glenn. I just got an interesting news alert. The plot about the A.P. African-American studies (APAAS) course is thickening. Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker is now demanding that “the role played by Black queer Americans” be included in the College Board’s APAAS course. His letter to the College Board said in part Illinois opposed “Florida’s racist and homophobic laws” and that Illinois would “reject any curriculum modifications designed to appease extremists like the Florida Governor and his allies.”
That has me wondering if you and John might be interested in designing a better APAAS course that could be offered to high school students (perhaps through state universities) by states opposed to the College Board's course. I have no doubt that between you, you and John could design a far better course that covered controversial topics but did so in a way that presented all sides of the issues. I imagine you could probably find people to the left of John that would be interested in making the course even better. I am not crazy about how such a course would encourage the Balkanization of the United States, but the states are supposed to be the laboratories of democracy. If you and John wouldn't be interested, I certainly hope someone does it. Feel free to make this part of your monthly Q&A. I'll repost this message when I get the email about the Q&A.
Hey, please pronounce Hamline /ham•lin/, same as one pronounces Brooklyn /brook•lin/, not brook•line. Although the faculty has voted 86% asking Fayneese Miller to resign, it’s not because of a correction to woke overreach; they’re calling her firing of Erika López Prater a delayed response to numerous racist incidents on campus. None of which has risen to the level of something more than micro-MICRO-aggression stupid behavior of kids singing along with a song, and the lax response of the cafeteria to a wish for Halal food for Muslims. This President Miller in 2015 also fired professor Jane Resh Thomas of their kid literature MFA program for her failure to cow to racial quotas in children’s literature authorship and characters.
~ Theo, a bike ride’s distance from Hamline University.
I wonder if our goals as a society are at odds with great art and creativity. We want to make the life of the average person better. We want to make it easier for everyone to meet their basic needs and to experience some level of comfort and security. Those conditions don’t produce great art. Hardship produces great art. Not having a safety net necessitates creativity. Being comfortable seems to lead to complacency. Not saying we should pursue great art at the cost of comfort, but just wondering if we can have both.
I think this is why the far left is just so boring. They are comfort and safety obsessed. Every comfort should be a right and anything that makes them uncomfortable is dangerous and should be prohibited. That mindset doesn't produce great art.
Perhaps another renaissance is possible but not under the current conditions. First, there has to be an acceptance that 2023 is demonstrably better for black Americans than 1923 and that racism is far less of any issue now than it was then. Second, there has been a massive change in black family structure in that century and everyone knows it. This extends to education and how it is viewed today vs. yesterday. Third, govt programs have actively contributed to today's issues and there is almost no one saying that has to stop. Well, no one but perhaps Thomas Sowell.
It's interesting to read the list that John cites of things that black people did back then simply because they wanted to do them, like writing sonnets. No one stopped to think, "that's what white folks do." Today, we're bombarded with idiocy like math is racist or a Duke professor's claim that football violence somehow symbolizes America's aggression toward black men. What? When the culture is drowning in that sort of stuff, high-minded things like another Harlem are surreal by comparison and it's too bad. I had the good fortune of being a teen in the 70s when crossover artists were the thing. Millions of white kids were exposed to Motown artists; anyone remember Motown? There were black and white students in my Alabama high school - yes, that Alabama - dancing to the same tunes. It's been sad to watch society regress in the decades since.
A renaissance might be possible if a Glenn Loury is not attacked for his belief system. No one would dream of saying all white people should be in ideological lockstep on every single issue, yet that seems to be expected of minorities. Why? Do they have no agency? Are they not capable of having a range of sincerely-held beliefs? Of course, they are capable. But they are often treated as outliers. Larry Elder as a face of white supremacy sticks in my mind as a serious contender for Peak Stupid, as if he has committed some kind of heresy for plotting a certain course. Perhaps the largest issue ties back to a previous post in which Glenn noted that the same place that once held black people as slaves also ushered in emancipation. The latter seems oddly forgotten because it's apparently easier to marinate in a past that none of us were involved in and none of us can change. Those folks in the 1920s didn't waste time on that.
A few years ago i read a biography of Alain Locke and then read his "The New Negro", which he edited. I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened had the depression not come. The work that came out of the Harlem Renaissance is very special.
Zora Neale Hurston is certainly one of the great American novelists of the 20th century.
Spiritual Jazz of the 50’s and 60’s... the Coltrane, Mingus, Miles Davis, etc jazz represents some of the greatest music humans have ever made, and there hasn’t been a scene that packed more innovation into a short period of time in music history.
This may be unpopular with the boomer audience, but no singular movement has been more impactful to the course of popular music than the development of hip hop was 35 years ago. For the first couple decades of its existence it was unquestionably a positive force in the black community (at least on the east coast, you can debate the west). Tribe Called Quest, Gangstarr, Nas etc made some of the best/most thought provoking art of the era.
Both of these movements were primarily black movements, and both created a huge number of timeless classic works that will be appreciated by people for centuries to come. Combine this with movements like Motown and techno in Detroit, house music created almost exclusively by the black lgbt community in chicago, and others, and you see that while there may never be another “Harlem Renaissance” there have been communities of black people moving our culture forward all over the place in the last half century.
Also, very importantly, the effects were not just on the black community, but humanity world wide. I know it is cliche, but A Dream Deferred, when I read that in very early adolescence, made a huge impact on me, and I grew up country and white. The reach is a big facet of the achievement.
I hope that our host understands that African and Afro-American Studies at Wash.U. is not that kind of program and Gerald Early isn't interested in doing that; in fact he mentioned teaching a class on Black conservatism in his article.
Right now I’m having fun watching black non traditional students in their forties and fifties treat a white professor from California like he’s a white devil installed by Lizard People. All this poor professor wants to talk about is critical race theory and these people in their forties are acting like fourteen year olds because he’s white and they are black. This is an African American Lit. Class in the US.
When I look back at old photos of Harlem in the 20s and 30s, I see a lot of happy faces. People in their finest attire, laughing, studying, getting along with everyone. It begs the question. What happened?
Personally, I have always been a supporter of civil rights, but when you see those pictures you have to wonder if black culture would have kept flourishing if brown v board never happened.
But black culture is not the only thing on the decline. White culture, since the 1960's hasn't faired much better. It seems everywhere you go in America some degenerate is there to greet you.
I prefer to dream of an American renaissance. One where everyone stops talking about race and quotas, and what the federal government can do for them. I also dream of an America where people can speak one sentence without using teenage exclamations and/or profanity, and where the adults learn to dress themselves properly.
That would be step one. Because I don't expect drugged up lunatics, with shorts at their ankles, and vocabularies so elementary that every other sentence includes the word muther*****, to be producing a renaissance anytime soon. At least, not the type of renaissance you would want to promote. We might soon, however, win the historical award for the "golden age of losers".
The Harlem Renaissance of our time has already happened. However, it never came in the form of traditional poetry, art, and literature. This time it came to us as 90s hip hop.
Asking if another Harlem Renaissance is possible is like asking if the Yiddish theater can be revived. The Yiddish theater existed because Jewish actors had few venues that accepted and the Jewish immigrant community were a ready audience. With the successful assimilation of the Jewish community into the American mainstream, the Yiddish theater no longer served a purpose. Similarly, the Harlem Renaissance existed because Black artists and intellectuals had few other venues where they could work. With the widespread acceptance of Black artists and intellectuals within mainstream venues, it seems unlikely that another Harlem Renaissance would attract the same level of talent as the original.
John’s observation that black studies departments seem to him to focus on racism, to the exclusion of other (worthier, positive) aspects of black history in the US, identifies a problem shared with other university departments with “studies” in their name. Women’s studies, for example, focus on discrimination against women in western society. These departments have been aptly called “grievance studies” because of their focus on discrimination against members of the group being “studied”.
Love your stuff Glenn and John. I doubt there will be a real revival anytime soon because so many of these so called artists are just over indulged parasites that have been getting ridiculous praise from the education bureaucracy, the welfare state and the Democratic Party. No doubt they will throw paint in canvas, write something that rhythms or repeat a few lines in a play.
But real art is earned and not given out for Diversity, Inclusion and Equity.
Hi Glenn. I just got an interesting news alert. The plot about the A.P. African-American studies (APAAS) course is thickening. Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker is now demanding that “the role played by Black queer Americans” be included in the College Board’s APAAS course. His letter to the College Board said in part Illinois opposed “Florida’s racist and homophobic laws” and that Illinois would “reject any curriculum modifications designed to appease extremists like the Florida Governor and his allies.”
That has me wondering if you and John might be interested in designing a better APAAS course that could be offered to high school students (perhaps through state universities) by states opposed to the College Board's course. I have no doubt that between you, you and John could design a far better course that covered controversial topics but did so in a way that presented all sides of the issues. I imagine you could probably find people to the left of John that would be interested in making the course even better. I am not crazy about how such a course would encourage the Balkanization of the United States, but the states are supposed to be the laboratories of democracy. If you and John wouldn't be interested, I certainly hope someone does it. Feel free to make this part of your monthly Q&A. I'll repost this message when I get the email about the Q&A.
Hey, please pronounce Hamline /ham•lin/, same as one pronounces Brooklyn /brook•lin/, not brook•line. Although the faculty has voted 86% asking Fayneese Miller to resign, it’s not because of a correction to woke overreach; they’re calling her firing of Erika López Prater a delayed response to numerous racist incidents on campus. None of which has risen to the level of something more than micro-MICRO-aggression stupid behavior of kids singing along with a song, and the lax response of the cafeteria to a wish for Halal food for Muslims. This President Miller in 2015 also fired professor Jane Resh Thomas of their kid literature MFA program for her failure to cow to racial quotas in children’s literature authorship and characters.
~ Theo, a bike ride’s distance from Hamline University.
Technical q: I'm a paying subscriber but this episode didn't show up in my podcast feed. Is there something I need to do?
I wonder if our goals as a society are at odds with great art and creativity. We want to make the life of the average person better. We want to make it easier for everyone to meet their basic needs and to experience some level of comfort and security. Those conditions don’t produce great art. Hardship produces great art. Not having a safety net necessitates creativity. Being comfortable seems to lead to complacency. Not saying we should pursue great art at the cost of comfort, but just wondering if we can have both.
I think this is why the far left is just so boring. They are comfort and safety obsessed. Every comfort should be a right and anything that makes them uncomfortable is dangerous and should be prohibited. That mindset doesn't produce great art.
Perhaps another renaissance is possible but not under the current conditions. First, there has to be an acceptance that 2023 is demonstrably better for black Americans than 1923 and that racism is far less of any issue now than it was then. Second, there has been a massive change in black family structure in that century and everyone knows it. This extends to education and how it is viewed today vs. yesterday. Third, govt programs have actively contributed to today's issues and there is almost no one saying that has to stop. Well, no one but perhaps Thomas Sowell.
It's interesting to read the list that John cites of things that black people did back then simply because they wanted to do them, like writing sonnets. No one stopped to think, "that's what white folks do." Today, we're bombarded with idiocy like math is racist or a Duke professor's claim that football violence somehow symbolizes America's aggression toward black men. What? When the culture is drowning in that sort of stuff, high-minded things like another Harlem are surreal by comparison and it's too bad. I had the good fortune of being a teen in the 70s when crossover artists were the thing. Millions of white kids were exposed to Motown artists; anyone remember Motown? There were black and white students in my Alabama high school - yes, that Alabama - dancing to the same tunes. It's been sad to watch society regress in the decades since.
A renaissance might be possible if a Glenn Loury is not attacked for his belief system. No one would dream of saying all white people should be in ideological lockstep on every single issue, yet that seems to be expected of minorities. Why? Do they have no agency? Are they not capable of having a range of sincerely-held beliefs? Of course, they are capable. But they are often treated as outliers. Larry Elder as a face of white supremacy sticks in my mind as a serious contender for Peak Stupid, as if he has committed some kind of heresy for plotting a certain course. Perhaps the largest issue ties back to a previous post in which Glenn noted that the same place that once held black people as slaves also ushered in emancipation. The latter seems oddly forgotten because it's apparently easier to marinate in a past that none of us were involved in and none of us can change. Those folks in the 1920s didn't waste time on that.
A few years ago i read a biography of Alain Locke and then read his "The New Negro", which he edited. I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened had the depression not come. The work that came out of the Harlem Renaissance is very special.
Zora Neale Hurston is certainly one of the great American novelists of the 20th century.
It is all a painful "what if".
Spiritual Jazz of the 50’s and 60’s... the Coltrane, Mingus, Miles Davis, etc jazz represents some of the greatest music humans have ever made, and there hasn’t been a scene that packed more innovation into a short period of time in music history.
This may be unpopular with the boomer audience, but no singular movement has been more impactful to the course of popular music than the development of hip hop was 35 years ago. For the first couple decades of its existence it was unquestionably a positive force in the black community (at least on the east coast, you can debate the west). Tribe Called Quest, Gangstarr, Nas etc made some of the best/most thought provoking art of the era.
Both of these movements were primarily black movements, and both created a huge number of timeless classic works that will be appreciated by people for centuries to come. Combine this with movements like Motown and techno in Detroit, house music created almost exclusively by the black lgbt community in chicago, and others, and you see that while there may never be another “Harlem Renaissance” there have been communities of black people moving our culture forward all over the place in the last half century.
Short answer is no.
The hard fought gains were squandered.
Also, very importantly, the effects were not just on the black community, but humanity world wide. I know it is cliche, but A Dream Deferred, when I read that in very early adolescence, made a huge impact on me, and I grew up country and white. The reach is a big facet of the achievement.
I hope that our host understands that African and Afro-American Studies at Wash.U. is not that kind of program and Gerald Early isn't interested in doing that; in fact he mentioned teaching a class on Black conservatism in his article.
Right now I’m having fun watching black non traditional students in their forties and fifties treat a white professor from California like he’s a white devil installed by Lizard People. All this poor professor wants to talk about is critical race theory and these people in their forties are acting like fourteen year olds because he’s white and they are black. This is an African American Lit. Class in the US.
When I look back at old photos of Harlem in the 20s and 30s, I see a lot of happy faces. People in their finest attire, laughing, studying, getting along with everyone. It begs the question. What happened?
Personally, I have always been a supporter of civil rights, but when you see those pictures you have to wonder if black culture would have kept flourishing if brown v board never happened.
But black culture is not the only thing on the decline. White culture, since the 1960's hasn't faired much better. It seems everywhere you go in America some degenerate is there to greet you.
I prefer to dream of an American renaissance. One where everyone stops talking about race and quotas, and what the federal government can do for them. I also dream of an America where people can speak one sentence without using teenage exclamations and/or profanity, and where the adults learn to dress themselves properly.
That would be step one. Because I don't expect drugged up lunatics, with shorts at their ankles, and vocabularies so elementary that every other sentence includes the word muther*****, to be producing a renaissance anytime soon. At least, not the type of renaissance you would want to promote. We might soon, however, win the historical award for the "golden age of losers".
The Harlem Renaissance of our time has already happened. However, it never came in the form of traditional poetry, art, and literature. This time it came to us as 90s hip hop.
Asking if another Harlem Renaissance is possible is like asking if the Yiddish theater can be revived. The Yiddish theater existed because Jewish actors had few venues that accepted and the Jewish immigrant community were a ready audience. With the successful assimilation of the Jewish community into the American mainstream, the Yiddish theater no longer served a purpose. Similarly, the Harlem Renaissance existed because Black artists and intellectuals had few other venues where they could work. With the widespread acceptance of Black artists and intellectuals within mainstream venues, it seems unlikely that another Harlem Renaissance would attract the same level of talent as the original.