Which New Negro Counts?

    In Davarian L. Baldwin’s text, Chicago’s New Negroes, he discusses the his conceptualization of what the real New Negro is. Unlike Alain Locke, who discusses the concept of the New Negro in terms of artists like Langston Hughes and others, Baldwin introduces a novice way at approaching this in which he argues that the New Negro is actually entrepreneurs. In his book, he opens the book with a detailed introduction about why he believes Jack Johnson is the first New Negro and also how Madam CJ Walker becomes the epitome of what the New Negro would and should become. Like Locke’s conceptualization of what the New Negro stands for, Baldwin discusses it in such a way which speaks about main goals of New Negro ideology having to do with dignity, racial pride, and the always-present goal at attaining some form of upward mobility.
   When Baldwin discusses Jack Johnson as the New Negro, he is making a statement that the epitome of the New Negro does not necessarily have to be an artist and that the artists are those who discuss what needs to be done in order for advancement as a race and as a people, and people like Jack Johnson are the “doers”- those that actually take action in order to attain the power that the artists suggest is possible. What I think is interesting about making Jack Johnson the first New Negro on Baldwin’s part is he chose a man that was extremely arrogant; Johnson was the first black man to ever make such a glorious achievement- to beat a white man and be awarded the Heavyweight Championship of the World- and he showed everyone that he was just as good, if not better, than white men. He demonstrated that he could beat them in boxing, date the same women, eat at and travel to the same places, and afford even more expensive things than the average white man- Johnson and his extravagant ways were really a testimony that not only he, but the black race, could and would accomplish anything and that there was nothing inferior about them. At a time when black people were considered mentally and physically inferior as a whole race, Johnson quickly debunked this myth and that is what Baldwin was really showing- that the same core goals that those artists Locke discussed valued were the same ones that people like Johnson actively put into motion.
    Similar to Johnson, Baldwin discusses beauty culture and the legacy of Madam CJ Walker and her cosmetic and beauty supply company as a narrative that contradicts Locke’s argument that the real or “ideal” New Negro was someone who was an artist, someone similar to the likes of what Du Bois would accept as part of his glorious Talented Tenth. Instead, Walker was the epitome of what Booker T. Washington argued for in that she worked hard and created a successful business built by a black woman that allowed her to help with the beauty dilemmas causing problems for black people, create schools in which to educate hair dressers, and enabled her to become the first black woman millionaire. She was not a well-educated woman yet she was obviously extremely bright and was able to help create a form of racial enlistment by creating new opportunity for women other than herself to become independent and work to make their own money.
    It is easily apparent though that even as Locke and Baldwin do have many differences in their own ideas of who is or can be considered a New Negro they do have many similarities in their conceptualitizations of the New Negro as someone who strive towards racial dignity and pride and a sense of upward mobility, and not for just their own individual benefit but for the good of the race as a whole.