Comparing Langston Hughes's, Being Old and Claude McKay's, If We Must Die

One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?

-Countee Cullen

The abstraction above is from the poem Heritage. These four lines can be used to explain why so many Harlem Renaissance writers dealt with the issue of authenticity. The poem expresses a sense of being removed from one's roots. The imagery of the cinnamon tree, which instantly brings about the memory of the strong scent of cinnamon works to express to the reader the strength of the connection that the narrator feels to these scenes loved by their fathers. Yet, before that the narrator expresses being "three centuries removed" from such imagery. Then in the last line the narrator ponders what Africa means to them. While the message of this portion of the poem may seem simple, the emotion of it says otherwise. The reader is able to get this sense of being tugged between the life they live everyday and the place where their people come from. This small portion of the poem begins to outline the feelings conveyed by many other African descended writers, especially during the Harlem Renaissance.

The poem's emotions seem to be positioned somewhere between the nationalist of Garveyism and those upper-class blacks who conveyed a desire to be white. It expresses a desire to know what Garvey wanted to offer African descended people in the closer proximity to white culture in comparison to the narrator's proximity to pure African culture. In many ways, the poem's balance between Africa and America parallels Harlem Renaissance writer's balance between nationalist ideology and forming a nation within a nation. The writers of the Harlem Renaissance express a belief in the value of some nationalist ideals while also expressing the ability to foster such ideals without having to break away from the nation, without having to leave America. Hughes and McKay all find that middle ground between assimilation and segregation.

To understand how Harlem Renaissance writers treated nationalism, it is best to first explore what nationalism is, that is to say, what is the ideology of nationalists? One of the most well-known nationalists was Marcus Garvey. Many would contend that while Garvey's views on what was happening to the black community in America were for the most part valid, his ideas on what to do about it were extreme. Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association sought to build a nation of African descended people from all around the world in Africa. The UNIA did not seek to gain equality for blacks through political, social, or economic change in their current location, but rather to establish their own government, society, and economy in a land of their own. Garvey felt that the rich blacks living in white societies were giving money to white institutions as a way of showboating, rather than as a means of doing good for their own race. That left the poor and middle class blacks, who were devoted to their own race, to keep the race from falling into worse condition. As Garvey put it,

Any ordinarily rich Negro or 'colored' person would prefer to give away ninety-nine and one-half per cent. of his wealth to become white, rather than to remain as he is, and to use such wealth in the promotion of racial ideals or industry that would help the mass of his people. (88)

By saying this, Garvey makes a mockery of DuBios whole idea of the talented tenth. He clearly expresses his feelings that rather than using their education and success to uplift the race as DuBios felt they should, they were using it to simply get closer to whites. Beyond simply using their wealth to earn the company of whites, Garvey felt that,