Life, 1929-07-19 · page 24 of 36
Life — July 19, 1929 — page 24: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a satirical piece mocking white high-society's fashionable embrace of Black culture in the late 1920s-early 1930s. The article critiques wealthy Manhattan elites ("our best sheep," "sophisticates") who treat African American art and Harlem nightclubs as trendy novelties rather than genuine appreciation. Key targets: **"High Yaller Peril"** mocks society women attending Harlem shows and references Mrs. Hoover (wife of President Herbert Hoover) dining with Mrs. De Priest, wife of the first Black congressman—treating this as shocking scandal-chic. **"Black Magic"** ridicules white audiences who gush about Black musicians' "natural gifts" while being unable to name actual songs, comparing Negro performers unfavorably to white composer Gershwin. **"The Dark Secret"** reveals the satire's core: whites can praise Black artists only by placing them "on a pedestal" while maintaining superiority—they cannot genuinely respect Black culture without contradicting their own racial hierarchy. The accompanying caricatural illustrations emphasize racial stereotypes common to the era's racist visual language.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
22 TN owe a x Ts I fi f*e Local Color UR very best sheep, in addition to being just too terribly modern, are now going in strong for color... colored bathrooms, colored furniture, colored ice cubes, colored clothes, colored newspapers and novels, colored biographies and—colored peo- ple. High Yaller Peril Society’s latest fad is the negro . . . two sepia shows are at present playing to full houses, there are one or two in the offing and one has just finished a year's run... Harlem is packing them in and our élite who would consider it a faux pas to be seen at the Zoo, sit at a table on Lenox avenue and simply rave, My Dear, about a bow-legged chorus of hip twisting monkeys... and why shouldn't they? ... our own sophisti- cates are go- ing in for that sort of thing so it must be all right! ... and now that Mrs. Hoover has broken bread with Mrs. De Priest can’t you just picture some of our Park avenue apart- ments at tea time? Black Magic How they rave about the negro’s great nat- ural gift for music, _ his innate love of song, his uncanny artistry, his spontaneity, his uncon- trolled pep, his gift of dancing, his rollicking humor... blah . . just what musical piece, outside of “I Can't Give You Anything But Love,” which is very reminiscent of something else, can you remember right now? + compare any colored musi- cal hit to the poorest thing Gershwin ever wrote... stack a chorus of dusky belles up against any white ensemble . . . and their rollick- ing sense of humor . . . I've seen two dinges arguing over some problem in arithmetic for the past ten or twelve years. The Dark Secret What, beside the fact that our so phisticates are going in for it, is be- hind all this raving about our colored brethren? . . . why it’s as simple as writing a book about Harlem... when our best sheep rave about an artist of their own color they imme- diately place themselves in an inferior position ... they cannot enthuse about their own brethren without put- ting them up on a pedestal but over the negro they can rave to their heart's content and still be very superior . .- comicbooks.com