"The thinking Negro has slipped from under the tyranny of social status and vector of public opinion to a position of self-definition and self-realization... He now wishes to be known for what he is, rather than for what he is forced to represent as a social problem, a caricature, or a collaborative defense against prejudice."
— Alain Locke, *The New Negro*, 1925
The intellectual shift described in the excerpt most directly challenged which of the following established strategies for Black social and political progress in the early twentieth century?
- AThe vocational education model of Booker T. Washington, by insisting that only elite classical academic training could yield genuine artistic and intellectual agency.
- BThe migration of Southern agricultural workers to Northern cities, by arguing that rural folk traditions were incompatible with modern urban artistic expression.
- The strategic use of cultural production primarily as an instrument of respectability politics to demonstrate Black refinement and equality to white America.Answer
- DThe mainstream Pan-Africanism of W.E.B. Du Bois, by aligning the cultural movement exclusively with the political repatriation programs of Marcus Garvey's nationalist movement.
Answer
The strategic use of cultural production primarily as an instrument of respectability politics to demonstrate Black refinement and equality to white America.
The correct answer identifies the strategy of respectability politics, which used cultural production to prove Black humanity and intellectual equality to a white audience. Locke's call for the 'New Negro' to bypass the 'tyranny of public opinion' and reject being a 'collaborative defense against prejudice' directly challenged this established, defensive approach in favor of authentic self-definition.
Step-by-Step Solution
Key Concept
The ideological shift of the New Negro Movement toward authentic cultural self-definition and away from respectability politics.