The Social Geography of Harlem

 “Harlem Shuffle” by Colson Whitehead, 2021

There’s a 1963 R&B song called “The Harlem Shuffle.”  In a way there’s some literary ‘swing’ in this book too – the sights and sounds of early 1960s Harlem in the characters that tread the streets and work the dives, the not so hidden chorus of money, power, violence and theft, the African-American songs of life and ire.  Carney is a high-end furniture shop owner in Harlem that cannot escape his father’s criminal background.  He lives in two worlds, while maintaining he’s on the up and up all the time.  He’s a small-time fence for stolen goods, with connections to bigger ‘jewelers’ downtown, but you wouldn’t know that from his impressive showroom packed with fancy couches and dining sets. 

Other than the buyers and young couples that come in looking for a new settee or love seat, there are scheming prostitutes, crooked cops, dueling criminal operations, drug markets and a steady stream of thieves and thugs.  It’s also an examination of the class structure in Harlem, especially the “Dumas Club” full of the bankers, real estate moguls, politicians and businessmen that really ran Harlem in 1959-1964. Poverty is also evident, people all over scrambling to make a dime. This contrast is for those who don’t understand class even in a ‘minority’ community.  You might note that last date, because that is when the Harlem Rebellion happened, an event that tore the neighborhood apart and was avoided by both the petit-bourgeois rich and lumpen thug alike.  Like so many others, it started when a pale face cop shot a dark-skinned 15 year old for nothing.  Whitehead’s political take on it however is vague, given the players he has chosen to focus on.  No Malcolm X, no Bill Epton, no Progressive Labor, just short mentions of CORE, the Muslims and the NAACP. 

Whitehead knows the streets, from Lenox Avenue, 125^th Street, Striver’s Row to Riverside Drive, the old, shabby businesses and the still existing Apollo Theater.  Even Mt. Morris Park where the bodies are dumped.  In a way its a nostalgic description of those times.  It was in 1959 at the upscale and still existing legendary Hotel Theresa that Carney is dragged into a criminal robbery by his ne’er-do-well boyhood cousin Freddie.  It is one of three criminal events that Whitehead gets Carney involved in.  Another risky moment is him getting a wealthy and powerful Manhattan family’s huge jewel dumped on him to hold, also by Freddie. This bit gives a window into the power of the ‘white’ rich downtown and Park Avenue real estate developers who have criminals, cops and politicians at their beck and call.  But most sweet is his complicated plot to torpedo a rich and crooked banker in the Dumas Club who took $500 from him on a lie.     

The story is also a depiction of ‘black’ small business and middle-class success. It’s another Horatio Alger tale, like so many. Carney expands his shop, hires more help, moves from his crowded apartment to Riverside Drive, and even contemplates giving up fencing, as his wife Elizabeth has a good job at the Black Star travel company. He’s finally admitted to the private Dumas Club, which he’d been wanting to get into for 5 years.  What he has to hide is the $30K in seed money he used to start his furniture store – money from one of his dead father’s robberies.  So the intertwining of legal and illegal success is clear in Harlem.  Harlem is a geography of hidden and obvious wealth and crime.

Whitehead is not a political writer, though his prior book “Nickel Boys” (reviewed below) exposed a racist reform school in Florida called the Dozier School.  He’s more of a sociologist and a humanist, with heroes and villains, with people who change, tracing how society functioned in Harlem at the time.  To my mind there seem to be a surfeit of criminals in this story, and other than many dark skinned ladies working proletarian jobs, a dearth of males doing the same thing.  Everyone's a hustler? ‘Crime’ stories capture readers nowadays, as it is the main axis of fiction, streaming and TV – detective, noir, heist, assassin, cop, murder, sexual violence, true crime, high tech swindles, serial killers and the like. Perhaps that is his method of getting readers to read about Harlem, which might reinforce preconceived bigoted ideas.  It is an early picture of late-stage U.S. capitalism, including it’s strivers, as it disintegrates into inequality, poverty and racism. 

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “The Nickel Boys” (Whitehead); “Amiable With Big Teeth” (McKay); “Summer of Soul” (Questlove); “How to be a Revolutionary,” “Really the Blues” (Mezzrow); “Go Tell It on the Mountain” (Baldwin); “A Terrible Thing to Waste,” “Red Hook Summer” (Lee); “Black Radical” (Peery); “Capitalist Shadows.”

The Nickel Boys will soon be a movie.

The Cultural Marxist / November 2, 2024