African-American literature should be about free expression

The argument

Writing for propaganda restricts the Black artist from writing freely about the Black experience, because it fixes the audience before a word is written. Instead of writing about Black people for Black people, propaganda literature — despite its intention of advancing racial equality — is writing about Black people for White people. The intention does not change the structure. Once the work must persuade, its subject matter, its tone and its choice of which lives to depict are all constrained by what the audience being persuaded is prepared to accept. Having social mobility, or political propaganda, as the main motivator for being a writer means that Black artists are bound to writing for and towards people who need to be convinced that Black lives are worthy. That is a debilitating premise to write from. It concedes at the outset that the humanity of the writer's own community is an open question, and it makes every book an exhibit in a case rather than a work in its own right. Aesthetic risk, ambivalence, ugliness, ordinariness — everything that literature is otherwise free to contain — becomes dangerous, because it might be taken as evidence for the prosecution. Because of the U.S.'s systemic racism, Black American artists have had to "prove" their worth through literature and art. But Black art should not be tied to the necessity of proving itself. African-American literature — by its own merit of being created by a human with a distinct, important cultural heritage — stands alone and is fiercely individual in the face of a White audience who may try to flatten the representation of Black lives or deny African-American literary worth. A literature written by and for the Black community is not a retreat from a wider readership; it is the only condition under which the writer is answerable to the experience being described rather than to the doubts of an onlooker. That freedom is what makes the work worth reading, and it is why African-American literature should be about free expression.

Context

Writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Langston Hughes believed that Black literature should not be tied to a political agenda. Instead of being tied to propaganda, Black literature should be free to explore and express true experiences, unhindered by the stereotypes and gatekeeping determined by White readers.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Art is not simply "for art's sake" or for "freedom of expression." Writing and art are inherently tied to politics. Writing seeks to change people's minds or bring about new perspectives. All art inherently has a message, and using art to merely pursue aesthetics and form is not worthwhile.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The dichotomy is too sharp: writers from Douglass to Baldwin addressed a mixed readership while writing about Black life on their own terms, so having an argumentative purpose does not entail writing for a white audience or surrendering free expression. [Rejecting P2] Inherent cultural value and political purpose are not in tension — the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement both asserted the first while embracing the second, and Du Bois's claim that all art is propaganda was made from inside the tradition rather than imposed on it. [Rejecting P3] "By and for the Black community" is itself a prescription about audience, which is the constraint the premise objects to when others impose it, and it sits awkwardly with free expression by telling writers whom to write for.