Richard Wright, the Black American author most known for the novel Native Son, once contributed an introduction to Black Metropolis, a famous sociological study of black life conducted by St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton Jr. in Chicago circa 1945. In many ways, his introduction is still worth revisiting, as it tackles the racial strife between Americans, warfare among the socioeconomic classes, and America’s place on the tumultuous world stage. For Wright, a reader of Black Metropolis will ultimately ask: “If the racial scene depicted here is true, if the points of view presented here are valid, if the meanings deduced here are real, then why have we not been told all this before?” The answer: Americans don’t need to be told all this before when they already know it to be true. What, then, is the point of Black Metropolis?
According to Wright, “American whites and blacks both possess deep-seated resistances against the Negro problem being presented, even verbally, in all its hideous fullness, in all of the totality of its meaning.” Further, the “deep-seated resistances” Americans have about addressing the “the Negro problem” is because the trauma of looking becomes too much for them. Thus, the reason Wright’s readers have never seen anything like the scenes, viewpoints, and meanings depicted in Black Metropolis is because of their own shutting out of this experience. But “the Negro problem,” as Wright calls it, is so pervasive in American life that it has left an imprint on the American person’s heart. It is so totalizing that, even if one refuses to look at it, the spontaneous afterimage of the problem will continually haunt American society. As such, even if a white or black person denies its truth, Wright argues that they are merely refusing to look. It is there if we wish to gaze upon it, and it impacts our reality even if we choose to shut it out. Black Metropolis is so valuable, then, because it looks at what most American choose to ignore.
Wright claims that all those groups and organizations of “interracial nature have consistently diluted the problem, blurred it, injected foggy moral or sentimental notions into it.” None of the organizations that push for any form of racial equality address the problem in all its totality. Note the verbs Wright uses here: “dilute,” “blur,” and “inject.” If “the Negro problem” is a powerful draught that most cannot stomach, then interracial organizations dilute its power. They make it easier to swallow. But what is lost when a draught is diluted? Its full power or its ability to impact the person who consumes it. Wright then claims that these interracial organizations blur the problem. This returns us to the realm of looking. If the problem is so hideous and all-consuming that it can hardly be gazed upon, then interracial organizations actively blur it. They make it easier to look at. The problem is no longer a sharp image but one that is vague. A vague image allows for vague responses or calls to action. Vagueness perhaps allows for people to make vague claims (“We don’t stand for racial inequality” or “End Racism”) without having any actionable plan. Blurriness, then, is a way to comfort people in their moral sensibilities without requiring them to do anything. Finally, these interracial organizations “inject foggy moral or sentimental notions into [the problem].” Once again, we have terms associated with sight (“foggy”). Also, the term “inject” has some medical undertones. One is injected with a medication or vaccination to ward off a virus or medical problem. Though medications and vaccinations are good things, “inject” in Wright’s context suggests an inclusion of something that was not present in the first place. The same is true of medicine. A human body might naturally become infected with an illness. Though the immune system will begin fighting off the virus or illness, one can also receive injections to aid in fighting off the infection. In Wright’s use of injection, moralities and sentimentalities are the supplementary materials being added to the system. If this is the case, then “The Negro problem” does not inherently possess any sort of moral or sentimental notion. It is simply a totality of American society. By injecting it with moralities or sentimentalities, we make the problem something that it is not. By injecting the problem with certain values or beliefs, it can be co-opted for other purposes: religion, Marxism, etc. Wright explores this further next.
He continues, “This fact is true of the churches as of the trade unions; as true of Negro organizations as of white; as true of the political Left as of the political Right; as true of white individuals as of black.” All scales of American society dilute and blur the problem or inject it with morality and sentimentality. Wright also implies that these institutions, factions, and individuals are exact opposites. The church’s opposite is the trade union; the political Left’s opposite is the political Right; and the white’s opposite is the black. This is a common move in western thinking. Everything has its opposite; everything is bifurcated into a duality. But Wright’s point is not so much to show us how opposing institutions and individuals all have “deep-seated resistance to the Negro problem.” Rather, I think he is suggesting that everyone in American society, from the Christian to the Communist and the millions who sit in between these two polarities, shut out “the Negro problem.” In the end, it does not matter what people call themselves, they all are complicit in shutting out the true problem undergirding the fabric of American society.
Wright then concludes, “The hour is too late to argue if there is a Negro problem or not.” Those who argue that there is no problem are simply revealing their “deep-seated resistances” to gaze upon it in its totality. Thus, Wright’s if/then question from earlier is already answered. It is a given, for Wright and the writers of Black Metropolis, “that the Negro’s present position in the United States results from the oppression of Negroes by white people.” Everything that the black community suffers in America is imposed upon them by white people. If this is a given, then what does Black Metropolis do for its readers? Wright argues, “The job of the authors was not to quiet or soothe, but to aid white people in knowing the facts of urban Negro life.” Black Metropolis is an “aid” to a white audience. It offers facts that have been intentionally overlooked for centuries. The question, then, becomes what can an aid do? If it shocks the readers into recognition, if it opens their eyes to what they’ve shut out, then should it also push them into action? For Wright, realization or perhaps even revelation are essential first steps. Americans must be jolted awake. They must gaze at the problem in all its starkness, drink its draught in all its potency, and refuse to inject it with any morality. Hence, Black Metropolis is a kind of “wake-up call” for black and white Americans alike.
Wright’s introduction, though not his most popular work, is worth re-visiting today because it offers us a glimpse into the racial conflict representative of 1945 America in the urban center of Chicago. By reading Wright’s essay, we can see how far we’ve come since 1945, but also evaluate how far we may still have to fully reach racial reconciliation. And, like the black and white readers of the mid-twentieth century, the problem in American society today might be sitting directly before our eyes. The first step, as Richard Wright clearly explains, is that we must look at problem in all its starkness.
Jack Love is a PhD Student at Texas A&M University where he studies American Literature of the twentieth century. He has contributed criticism and reviews to venues including Christianity & Literature, the Oxford Handbook of American Street Literature, and the Journal of Arts Writing by Students. Additionally, he teaches composition, business writing, and literature courses at Texas A&M.
