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Question

Difficulty: HardThe New Negro Movement and Cultural Debates

Read the excerpt below from a 1927 essay by scholar Benjamin Brawley and answer the question that follows:

"It is in the choice of themes that the new school is most vulnerable. It seems to have gone wild over the 'low-down' Negro... in the effort to be 'different' or to be 'realistic' it has too often mistaken the sordid for the significant, and the vulgar for the vital. We have a right to expect of our writers and artists something more than a preoccupation with the cabaret and the dive..."

Which of the following debates within the New Negro Movement is best illustrated by Brawley's critique?

  1. A
    The strategic conflict between Booker T. Washington's focus on vocational training and W.E.B. Du Bois's advocacy for the classic academic education of a "Talented Tenth."
  2. B
    The ideological divide between Marcus Garvey's mass populist movement advocating for emigration to Africa and mainstream Pan-Africanists seeking international elite congresses.
  3. The division between established Black intellectuals who advocated for art as a tool of moral respectability and racial uplift, and younger artists who demanded the freedom to depict working-class realism.Answer
  4. D
    The sociological tension between southern migrants fleeing rural sharecropping and northern Black communities seeking to restrict further migration to preserve urban jobs.

Answer

The division between established Black intellectuals who advocated for art as a tool of moral respectability and racial uplift, and younger artists who demanded the freedom to depict working-class realism.
The correct answer accurately identifies the tension between the older generation's advocacy for respectability politics and the younger generation's pursuit of artistic realism. Benjamin Brawley, representing conservative Black intellectuals, argued that literature should uplift the race by highlighting middle-class refinements and moral standards. Conversely, younger Harlem Renaissance writers like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston believed that authentic art must represent the real, raw experiences of the Black working class.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the stimulus excerpt to identify the author's core critique.
The author (Benjamin Brawley) objects to the 'new school' of writers depicting 'low-down' themes, 'cabarets,' and what he considers 'sordid' and 'vulgar' aspects of life.
Identifying the author's primary argument is necessary to map it to the correct historical debate.
2
Relate Brawley's argument to the cultural debates of the New Negro Movement.
Brawley's demand that writers focus on 'something more' than these gritty themes reflects the older generation's belief in respectability politics and art as a tool for racial uplift, which conflicted with the younger writers' desire for realistic representations of Black working-class culture.
This step connects the primary source to the target learning objective regarding the Harlem Renaissance's internal debates.
3
Evaluate the options to find the one that accurately describes this tension.
The option identifying the conflict between moral respectability and working-class realism is selected as the correct answer.
This option captures the exact aesthetic and ideological divide illustrated in the passage, whereas other choices focus on unrelated political, educational, or socioeconomic disputes.

Key Concept

The New Negro Movement and Cultural Debates
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Topics

The New Negro Movement and Cultural Debates

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