Claude McKay was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural and literary movement in the 1920s centered around Harlem, a neighborhood in New York City. Poets of the Harlem Renaissance celebrated their identities as Black artists, embraced self-expression, and wrote against demeaning stereotypes of Black people. Harlem became a cultural mecca not only for poetry but for all forms of expression, particularly dance and jazz music. McKay published works, including the poetry collection Harlem Shadows and the novel Home to Harlem, that contributed to this movement. He was also politically active and advocated for the rights of Black people and laborers.
“The White House” embodies many themes of this movement in literature. For example, many poets of the Harlem Renaissance blended historical, traditional forms of literature with an innovative thematic focus on political resistance and Black identity. Here, McKay plays with the structure of a sonnet—a poem traditionally used to express love or devotion—to condemn the racism endemic to American society. Poetry, prose, painting, and sculpture of the Harlem Renaissance also used the genre of realism to explore the Black experience. Although “The White House” relies heavily on metaphor and is built around the symbol of the White House as a representation of Black political and economic exclusion, the poem is also realist. It does not romanticize its subject matter (unlike a traditional sonnet), but confronts the painful and visceral emotional experience of facing racism. Additionally, “The White House” uses the first-person perspective and focuses carefully on its speaker’s individual perceptions and reactions to the exclusion that they face. This emphasis on individual perspective is also a recurring theme in the work of Harlem Renaissance authors. For example, Langston Hughes—a renowned Black poet who was a contemporary of McKay’s and a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance—wrote that the work of poets at this time aimed to present a realistic portrait of what it was like to be Black in America, an “expression of our individual dark-skinned selves.” The poem’s references to the White House, while not meant to be taken literally or reductively to refer to the White House itself, also imbue the poem with a political consciousness that was characteristic of work in the Harlem Renaissance. Finally, “The White House” also exemplifies the sense of pride that characterized work of this time period. The speaker in the poem asserts and celebrates their own inner strength, grace, and conviction to remain true to their values and identity even when operating within a racist society.
