Panthers and Dragons On the Page: The Afro-Asian Dynamic in the Black Aesthetic

Abstract

In his poem “Return of the Native,” Amiri Baraka describes the urban area of Harlem as “violent and transforming.”1 The same could be said of the 1960s Black Aesthetic, the artistic arm of the Black Arts Movement, and its impact on the way we perceive ethnic urban experiences. While the Black Aesthetic seeks to destroy a homogenous American culture and celebrate black culture, it also appeals to Asian Americans, changing the way they thought of their own ethnic culture. For both groups, the Black Aesthetic represents an urban aesthetic of cultural production. While other black aesthetics have supplanted the 1960s Black Aesthetic, contemporary African American writers like Ishmael Reed and Chinese American writers like Frank Chin continue to utilize elements of the Black Aesthetic in their work. Their use demonstrates not only the saliency of the Black Aesthetic, but also its inadequacy in relation to certain contemporary realities.