Notes of a Native Son

Commentary magazine originally published “The Harlem Ghetto” in February 1948. It is a brief sketch of Baldwin’s native neighborhood in New York City. His essay does three things: It captures the main features of racial oppression in Harlem; it explores the limitations of central Black institutions, such as Black press and religion; and it gestures towards the possibility for interracial understanding.

Racial oppression is easily enumerated in terms of dilapidated buildings, crowded and dirty streets, landlords that gouge their tenants, inflated cost of living, too few jobs at depressed wages, and the occasional social uprising. Despite the stultifying oppression, Baldwin writes, the casual observer will not find Harlem any worse off than any other poor neighborhood. The reasons for this lie in the realm of culture, Baldwin intimates, but he specifically notes the vibrant Black press and churches.

The independent Black newspapers and magazines, of which he mentions no less than six, play a vital role within and across Black communities such as Harlem. Baldwin is less than flattering about the quality of these publications. On the whole, he views them as vehicles for Black elites; as modeled on the White press (and poor facsimiles at that); or as guided by the proposition that, as he puts it, “anything a White man can do a Negro can probably do better” (5).