The Warmth Of Other Suns

The search for the freedom to be a full member of the United States, with all of the rights and opportunities that come with it—is a central theme of The Warmth of Other Suns.

Like immigrants from Europe, African-American migrants saw the North as a land of opportunity and promise. However, unlike the Europeans, African-Americans were already citizens of the United States—they should not have had to leave the South to exercise their constitutional rights.

Many migrants viewed the North as the real America, a place where they could embrace the ideals of the American Dream. Because of this, Southern migrants were often harder working, better educated and more industrious than Northern-born Blacks. However, unlike immigrants from Europe, who could assimilate into white dominant culture in a few generations, migrants could never escape the color of their skin, which would continue to hold them back. Only one of these groups would be accepted as fully American. 

Often given the epitaph the “Promised Land,” the US North served as a bastion of hope for African-Americans who felt that if they could only find a way out of the oppressive Jim Crow South, their lives would become exponentially better. However, migrants soon learned that the North practiced a less visible racism that did not overtly disallow African-Americans rights and jobs, but curtailed their opportunities by other means.

The Northern Paradox—that a Black person citizen was in theory a full citizen, but in practice segregated in housing and work—left African-Americans in a liminal space, unsure of their standing in a given situation or community. In the South, the rules governing segregation were clear, but the North was a learning curve: It was a land of opportunity with a glass ceiling difficult for many African-Americans to break through.

One of the major issues facing African-Americans living in the South was whether to leave for the better social and economic opportunities in the North. It was not an easy decision, especially for educated Black Southerners. Although it made sense to go to a place free from the risk of physical violence and constant psychological debasement, many felt that by leaving, they were shirking their duty to make things better from within.

One line of Black thought argued for staying in the South to work for civil rights directly in their native communities. Others considered the idea of staying out of the question because they saw the way the system conspired against them. This group of African-Americans believed the best way to advance their cause was to leave and build up economic and social status, which would then translate to greater power to affect and influence change across the nation. The Warmth of Other Suns argues that it is still unclear which choice proved more effective in empowering African-Americans.  

The generational divide between Southern Blacks who migrated to the North and their Northern-born children dominates the second half of The Warmth of Other Suns. The lack of understanding between the original migrants and their progeny negatively influenced the Black community in the North.

The older and younger groups split over ideas of culture and assimilation. First generation migrants retained customs that tied them to the region of their birth, while their children eschewed their Southern roots to better fit in. Those born in the South saw stark differences between the South and the North; they could not understand why their children did not value the opportunities available in the North in the same way. For original migrants, the North outpaced the South in every manner possible, despite the Northern Paradox. However, those born in the North saw only the structural racism that affected the choice of jobs and areas to live.

Northern-born generations grew up without the strong community ties that their migrant parents had seen in the South. Instead, these younger generations gravitated to drug and gang culture, influenced by peers rather than elders. Success and advancement did not always follow the second-generation migrants. Instead, white flight, poverty, and crime caused once affluent African-American neighborhoods to deteriorate.