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LE ROI JONES AND NEW WRITERS JACKSON The younger poets no longer plead, or ask for rights from the white man. Instead of searching themselves for faults which engender the contempt of the white man, they examine the white man, and after regarding his wars, his hypocritical religion, his exploitation, his dehumanization, they dub him "The Beast." They no longer pity themselves...Instead they say, "I am black and beautiful." They reject whiteness and white standards. They call themselves blacks, rejecting the word Negro, which they say was given to them by white men.2 The new Black writers write almost exclusively for a Black audience. They hope that their works will be relevant to the ghetto dwellers and that they will be able to direct their readers to Black consciousness, Black unity, and Black power. As Randall has emphasized this "may be called didacticism or propaganda, but they [black writers) are indifferent to labels put upon it."3. They consider such labels just another one of the white man's hangups and they reject them. Likewise, they care not whether their works survive as great achievements of art. All they are concerned about is its effectiveness in making other Blacks conscious of themselves, their beauty, their lives, and the hollowness of the white man's life style. LeRoi Jones has been called "the bellwether of the revolutionary Black poets."4 From his break with the lower east side (N.Y.) poets circle, to his arrest for possession of a gun during the bloodiest riot in Newark history, his subsequent conviction and acquittal, he has "become a symbol of the Black rebellion to the younger poets, who imitate him and learn from him." In Home: Social Essays, a collection of articles, essays, and review, one can trace the development of LeRoi Jones' political, artistic and social stands as they become more and more militant and Black nationalistic. In the preface, Jones forces the reader to understand where the direction of this writings has taken him and will take him still further: ...one truth anyone reading these pieces ought to get is the sense of movement - the struggle, in myself to understand where and who I am, and to move with that understanding...And these moves, most times unconscious...seem to me to have been always toward the things I had coming into the world, with no sweat; my blackness...By the time this book appears, I will be even blacker.6 233
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Reopened for Editing 2024-02-15 11:13:08