Race Contacts and Interracial Relations.

Long, Richard A.

African American scholarship is well served by Jeffrey C. Stewart's rescue of this group of five lectures, subtitled "Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Race," from the massive trove of Alain Locke papers at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center of Howard University. The lectures, delivered in 1916, were a reworking of a series first given in 1915, representing a major concern of Locke's, growing out of his earnest reflections on race in cross-cultural and international terms. His experience as a student in England and Germany lay at the basis of his analysis. As Stewart's introductory essay shows, Locke's thought was stimulated by leading figures in the discourse on race, including Du Bois and Franz Boas. Nevertheless, his formulations were independent and innovative. Stewart's detailed account is itself a valuable contribution to this major theme of twentieth-century life.

The titles of the individual essays are useful in indicating the range of reflection which Locke gave to the subject: "The Theoretical and Scientific Conceptions of Race," "The Political and Practical Concepts of Race," "The Phenomena and Laws of Race Contacts," "Modern Race Creeds and Their Fallacies," and "Racial Progress and Race Adjustments." Locke's thinking on race and his disposition to make it a subject of intellectual inquiry were naturally influenced by the continuing vitality of nineteenth-century theories of racial inequality created primarily to undergird imperialism and economic exploitation. But Locke was inspired to place this in a larger social and psychological context. As Stewart notes, Locke believed that "racism was not only a reflection of class interests but also a cultural system that reflected the social psychology of a people" (xxviii). Driving Locke's inquiry was a quest for solutions and remedies.

Paradoxically, Locke found the path to amelioration through the development of a common racial consciousness among the victims of racial aggression. Stewart observes:

What distinguished Locke's recommendation of race consciousness in 1916 was his emphasis on the arts and letters as the vehicle for African American racial progress. . . . Like European minorities, African Americans could compensate for their thwarted political aspirations for self-determination by empowering themselves through a cultural ideology. (xxxii)

Hence we have in these essays a careful articulation of the theory which later underlay Locke's program as the mentor of the Harlem Renaissance. In consequence, this volume is indispensable for a full understanding of the energy and authority which Locke asserted beginning in 1923 on African American life and culture. It should be read and discussed widely.