describe Hughes’s tone toward African American entertainers in the excerpt from “When the Negro Was in Vogue”?

Question

I am on access english and its pretty hard. I really need some help.

Answer 1

Look up the term "irony."  Consider the appeal of the term "vogue." What was initially in "vogue" did not remain in vogue.  What was the appeal for white people of the "Cotton Club" in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance?  What was the impact of the Harlem Renaissance? 

 

Langston Hughes writes, there was an "influx of whites toward Harlem after sundown, flooding the little cabarets and bars where formerly only colored people laughed and sang, and where now the strangers were given the best ringside tables to sit and stare at the Negro customers--like amusing animals in a zoo." Source(s): http://faculty.pittstate.edu/~knichols/vogue.html
 

1t was a period when every season there was at least one hit play on Broadway acted by a Negro cast. It was a time when books by Negro authors were published with much greater frequency and much more publicity than ever before or since in history. It was a period when white writers wrote about successful Negroes more so than Negroes wrote about themselves.

(Merle Rubin. the Monitor. June 23, 1994)

 

The irony about the period that the Negro was in "vogue" is the extent to which the white population embraced Harlem culture, music and clubs. Harlem became "trendy" for white folks to partake  yet they strongly held very racist views towards the people they came to see. The plight of the Negro in America did not change.