James Mercer, Reaction Paper Example

This is a reaction to James Mercer’s beliefs and values. Reading about James Mercer gave me the reaction that he might have been ok with the equal but separate doctrine because he wanted blacks to maintain a separate cultural identity and not interact much with whites. This is because he feared that since whites are majority and the ones in power, their values may enter the black culture as well. It seems to me that Mercer was not really against the middle class because he valued the struggles of working class but since middle class rarely contained blacks, Mercer would have preferred blacks to rise in economic hierarchy rather than trying to get access to the inner circle of white-dominated middle class. I was surprised to find Mercer was one of the earliest jazz poets. It seems that he played a huge but invisible role in the rise of Haarlem as a well-known expression of black culture.

Civil rights movement didn’t strive for equal but separate system but instead wanted to integrate blacks into the American society and be given equal rights as their white counterparts. But one cannot blame Mercer because he lived in a different period and the injustices and racial marginalization of blacks that he witnessed would have killed anyone’s hope of racial equality. He had already left the world by the time civil rights movement became a huge force under Martin Luther King’s leadership. Mercer is an example that even though pre-civil rights black culture is more known for its music accomplishments, there were other black writers behind Frederick Douglas, also who have left a great body of literature behind them.