The White Negro – Norman Mailer (1957)

“The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster is a 9,000-word essay by Norman Mailer that connects the ‘psychic havoc’ wrought by the Holocaust and atomic bomb to the aftermath of slavery in America in the figuration of the Hipster, or the ‘white negro’. The essay is a call to abandon Eisenhower liberalism and a numbing culture of conformity and psychoanalysis in favor of the rebelliousness, personal violence and emancipating sexuality that Mailer associates with marginalized black culture. The White Negro was first published in the 1957 special issue of Dissent, before being published separately by City Lights. Mailer’s essay was controversial upon its release and received a mixed reception, winning praise, for example, from Eldridge Cleaver and criticism from James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Allen Ginsberg. Baldwin, in particular, heavily criticized the work, asserting that it perpetuated the notorious ‘myth of the sexuality of Negros’ and stating that it was beneath Mailer’s talents. The work remains his most famous and most reprinted essay and it established Mailer’s reputation as a ‘philosopher of hip’. The White Negro (WN) date from the mid-1950s. According to the biography of Carl Rollyson, Mailer wanted to tap into the energy of the Beat Generation and the changes of consciousness members such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac inspired. Mailer used ‘Quickly: A Column for Slow Readers’, his column in The Village Voice, to develop and explore his philosophy of ‘Hip’, or ‘American existentialism’. In the psychopathic character Marion Faye from his 1955 novel The Deer Park Mailer considered he had created a prototypical Hipster. Mailer also tapped into the contemporary cultural dialogue about black male sexuality and, with the prompting of Lyle Stuart, published four paragraphs about black male super-sexuality in the Independent. Mailer’s outrageous sentiment was not well received (notable critics included William Faulkner, Eleanor Roosevelt, and W. E. B. Du Bois) but the debate prompted him to begin work on WN. … The origins of Other influences on both Lipton’s Journal and The White Negro include the psycho-sexual theories of Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich, the writings of Karl Marx, and the music of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and other bebop jazz artists. Dearborn writes that Mailer saw these great men of jazz as quintessential figures of Hip: Miles Davis, for example, ‘was the avatar of Hip, and, with his lean, chiseled good looks and his ultra cool manner he was distinctly a sex symbol as well, appealing to white women as well as black’. …”
Wikipedia
Academia: [PDF] The White Negro – Norman Mailer; Hipsters! The contemporary counter-culture and how it isn’t one – Sean McGuigan; etc.
The Nation: My Norman Mailer Problem—and Ours
Common Dreams – “The White Negro”: Norman Mailer’s Essay 65 Years Late