[The following essay was first published in The New Republic, March 9, 1968.]

There is a growing body of black writing which is not to be thought of simply as writing by blacks. It is not something susceptible of being democratized and assimilated in the same way that writing by Jews has been. The movement there was, very roughly, from Jewish writing to Jewish-American writing to writing by authors "who happen to be Jews." But the new black writing I am talking about isn't the work of authors who happen to be black; it doesn't make up the kind of movement within a broader culture by which minorities, such as the Jews or the Southerners in our own society, contribute from their special cast of mind and imagination and their particular historical and psychic backgrounds something "universal," increments to the literary or intellectual traditions.

These black writers I am speaking...