Socialites and Social Life
(Negro Style)
By D. W. BROGAN WE all find ourselves, from time to time, in doctors' or dentists' waiting rooms, or in a club where all the serious, worth-while papers have been read. In either case, you find yourself reading a shiny magazine in which the portraits of Lady Docker and Lady Littlehampton are surrounded by trickles of text. And they are now being given the flattery of imitation in America, as the increasingly prosperous Negro population erects its own internal class barriers and creates, on the model of its white predecessors, 'society,' café and plain.
It is only to the unreflective that there is anything odd in this. To be 'accepted' is the aim of the American Negro, and if he is not likely to be accepted at Piping Rock or Myopia, then the next best thing is to create his own Piping Rock or Myopia. If Aksarben or Momus won't have him, then he can invent his more colourful and, I suspect, more amusing equivalents. From the point of view of a spaceman, just getting off his flying saucer, the elaborate reports of the high life above stairs of the cream of Boston's Negro society are no odder than those of the corresponding white activities. A Negro girl 'coming out' in Boston has presumably as good and, intrinsically, the same kind of time as a product of Miss Winscr's school coming out at the Somerset (the hotel, not the club). At any rate, this Negro society exists and, as in the case of its white counterpart, it is eagerly read about by thousands who are not, and do not expect to be, part of it. Sugar Hill is as hard to scale as Beacon Hill used to be. So we have Ebony, Tan, Copper and miniature versions, of which Jet seems to be the most dashing.
These magazines are not meant for sociologists, but they serve his purposes, for the 'value system' of the rising Negro middle class and of its admirers is clearly revealed. It differs little, if at all, from that of its white counterpart. Here, as in other things, the Negroes are 100 per cent. Americans. There is the same simple belief in gadgets and figures. The white mink coat of 'Prophet' Jones is estimated to be worth $13,000 and the Connecticut house of Mr. Jackie Robinson, the great baseball player, is worth $47,500. All this is very American— especially the news about the houses of Messrs. Robinson, Eckstine, etc. For in America, real estate is news; here, it is only news if you find a temple in the foundations.
Robinson and Eckstine, baseball and popular music. The names chosen illustrate the type of achievement that, if not the most admired, is most easily assessed by the American Negro. Were not Jackie Robinson and Satchell Paige (monu- mentum wre perennius) the first Negroes to break into 'Big League' baseball, the heroic predecessors of the fabulous Willie Mays? It is not only baseball: for there seems no doubt that the great American Negro, for other Negroes, is still Joe Louis.
It would be unju§t to suggest that other types of success are not noted. Great names of the past, like Frederick Douglass and George Washington Carver, are recalled; great names of the present. like those of Mrs. Bethune and Dr. Bundle, are commemorated. Successes in academic life are proudly reported, like the role of Negro teachers in the medical school of the University of Illinois. So are breakdowns in old barriers. the complete 'integration' of the Coast Guard (i.e., the ad- mission of Negroes to all jobs in the service). The 'largest jet pilot' in the American Air Force is a Negro, and Springfield. Mass., has its first 'sepia-owned cabaret.' Unless Springfield has changed since I last saw it, this should meet a real, if not long-felt, want.
But scientists and scholars are not among the main staples of the shiny magazines. Athletes are—like the Negro runner who was getting ready to run the four-minute mile, as were some listed white competitors. Not listed was the name of Roger Bannister. But the stage, jazz, the films, the more spectacular sports, are what really win the attention of the news and picture editors. One 'atomic mathematician' can- not really compete with Miss Doris Smart tossing 'her well- educated hip,' and no doubt doing it as well as Miss Monroe. Can Mr. Thurogood Marshall, the counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, the NAACP, who won the great Supreme Court victory over school segregation, really compete with Miss Dorothy Dan- dridge for continuous news interest? Can Miss Marian Anderson? They may have longer lives as news items. (I asked myself, where is Miss Maxine Sullivan, whom I heard swinging 'Loch Lomond' shortly before Munich? Where is the Onyx?) The fame of the singing and dancing stars may be 'a garland briefer than a girl's': the handsome young women in bikinis who can proudly say, 'I am black but comely,' may not be on the front pages in ten years' time, but they are now.
We, the common readers, want to know about and feel with the people who can do superlatively well what we can do badly—sing, dance, make love. For if there is one dominant theme, it is love. The magazines that I have studied are all ready to discuss the problems of love, and also of what is called 'sex.' This preoccupation is not confined to Negro magazines, as we all know, but it is treated with more hearty and open interest than is usual in corresponding 'Caucasian' publica- tions. Problems that Ann Temple deals with in generalities are dealt with here, firmly and freely.
Most of the female reader population has got a firm hold of the truth that Miss Dinah Shore learned when she was in pigtails. Their 'mamas done tole them' that 'man is a two face,' and if you neglect this simple fact you will have to sing 'blues in the night.' And when you have got your man, you have to keep him—often a harder job. Even the church is not immune from these problems. Thus when Miss Hazel Scott, the celebrated pianist, married the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, this 'was a hard pill for Abyssinian Baptists to swallow.' It is not made easier by the fact that the Rev. Mr. Powell 'doubles in brass' as a Congressman. But the congregation came to accept the fact that Mrs. Powell's life is 'dominated by two forces, music and religion.' So all is well. Not all other clerical households are as fortunate. 'A minister must learn how to handle adoring female members, for as a minister (who prudently desires to remain anonymous) puts it: 'A jealous wife can raise more sand in a congregation than Lucifer can in one good day in hell.'
And what is true of the clergy is true of the laity. No more than white marriages are Negro marriages, in modern America, the old A.1 copper-bottomed, lifetime jobs that they used to be. If complete trustworthiness is wanted, it must be sought outside the USA. For in a sentence that ought to be inscribed in letters of gold over the entrance of every /ycee or college des jeunes fines in France, Miss June Richmond lays it down that 'a Frenchman never says what he doesn't mean.' Against this, all I can set is the firm statement of the wife of Nat 'King' Cole. that he is a King.
As has been suggested, love and sex are not dissociated. We have it on Mr. Duke Ellington's authority that 'whole- some sex is one of God's finest creations.' And this, too, seems, judging from the illustrations (there is no text), what Miss Eartha Kitt is suggesting as she sings 'C'est si bon.' Miss Kitt is quite an authority now. She has been adding Hebrew to the seven languages she already sings in. 'Santa Baby' in Hebrew would be quite a feat, but then Miss Kitt is a very remarkable young lady. She is not without critics. She 'learned the subtle art of injecting hidden meanings into songs' but she gives no credit line to her teachers. Sugar Ray Robinson has his critics too. So has Miss Lena Horne for only per- forming in expensive niteries where her old and loyal admirers cannot afford to hear her. And Miss Horne (like Miss Richmond and a good many others) is criticised for marrying a white man Negro GIs wired her, 'Don't do that to us, Lena.' But she did. So did Miss Katherine Dunham. Indeed, the theme rated an article, 'Do Negro Stars Prefer White Husbands?'
Obviously this form of miscegenation has a great power of attraction and repulsion. The attitude of the magazines and of their readers is ambivalent. On the one hand, there is obvious pride in breaking the race barrier by marriago; on the other, the memory of the exploitation of Negro women, outside marriage, which has led to an insistence on Race pride and Race exclusiveness, is also noticeable. It is one thing to report, with approval, the marriage of Miss Cripps to Mr. Joseph Appiah; another to swallow the implied doc- trine that these marriages of the stars are race promotion. The same problem is raised by the question of 'passing.' If Negroes can 'pass,' that is disappear into the white com- munity, then most white, and especially southern, folklore is nonsense. But is 'passing' not betrayal of the race? It is one thing to use the power of 'passing,' as Walter White did, for example, to investigate lynchings for the NAACP. It is another to go over for good. And many hearts must have been warmed by the declaration of a woman who had 'passed' : 'Any of you folks who'd change the warmth and loving hearts of our own for a cold stone white existence can have it.'
And yet the prestige of the once dominant race is obvious. Every magazine carries a mass of advertising for lightening the skin and straightening the hair. The stories, possibly unconsciously, tell the same tale. It pays to be white, even today, in the age of Judge Christie, Dr. Bunche, Ethel Waters and Richard Wright. 'Is the Negro Happy?' asks Ebony. He may look it, but 'in reality the American Negro is less happy than Shakespeare's Melancholy Dane.' The Negro wants to be happy for the same reason and in the same way that others are happy. . . . He seeks acceptance.' Fisk and Howard Universities have chapters of Phi Beta Kappa; a Negro athlete has at last got the Sullivan award. But is this full acceptance? No. What would be? Well, a coming-out party at the Somerset might help!
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