What ‘Harlem’ Can Teach Us About the Black Arts Debate

In the age of social media, where people often feel more ignored and misunderstood than ever, director David Greaves’ documentary Once Upon a Time in Harlem feels like a relic: a snapshot of a time when intellectuals came together to engage in lively, productive debate.

Restored from an original work by Greaves’ father, William, the film captures a four-hour cocktail party in 1972 at Duke Ellington’s townhouse as many of the luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance reflected on the period. The salon included pianist Eubie Blake, artist Romare Bearden, activist Louise Thompson Patterson, playwright Irving C. Miller, journalist Gerry Major, and librarian Jane Blackwell Hutson, all of whom grappled with the legacy of the era and the issues it raised that were still relevant at the time.

It was an intimate and engaging discussion by people with different approaches, styles and even perspectives that, as Georgetown University Assistant Professor of Black Studies Brian Adams put it, “still kept the goals of Black humanity and liberation at the forefront.”

One of the sources of conflict expressed in Once Upon a Time in Harlem is the Harlem Renaissance, or the New Negro Movement as it was often referred to at the time. I heard someone say it was the 1920s. Another theory is that it really took hold in the 1930s, while others believe its origins were around the 1910s, interrupted by the Silent Protest March of 1917.

There are also reflections on the agenda of black journalists; reflections on the intentions and strategies of political activist Marcus Garvey; and the concerns of writers and anthropologist Zora Neale, sculptor Augusta Savage, poet and novelist Countee Cullen, and others are minimized. There is rich discussion about the efficacy of influential figures such as gangster Casper Holstein and author Carl Van Vechten, who respectively provided funding and support for members of the Harlem Renaissance and their work. Van Vechten, author of the controversial 1926 novel Nigger’s Paradise, raised the question of how white patronage affected the cultural output of the era.

Relatedly, writer and journalist George Schuyler mused on his famous 1926 article in The Nation, “The Bald Talk of Negro Art,” and poet and activist Langston Hughes’s follow-up essay, “The Negro Artist and the Race Mountain,” as emergent critiques of white people’s relationship to black art.

In “Harlem,” it’s not long before the many voices in Ellington’s home grow louder and begin to overlap, drinks are poured, and the elder Greaves flies from one side of the room to the other, capturing every retort and vivid recollection. Decades after the Harlem Renaissance, it must have been remarkable to witness such deep insights and passionate thoughts about the era from those who lived it—the same year the National Negro Political Convention again sounded the alarm about some of these same concerns.

Yet in 2026, in an age where social media often undermines critical thinking and disagreement, this is truly extraordinary. It’s also a kind of nostalgia that seems imperative in today’s Hollywood, which is permeated by an empty, moneyed sentimentality about the past.

What you see in “Once Upon a Time in Harlem” are, to borrow Skyler’s words from the film, “the hallmarks of a civilized community,” with people challenging each other in everything from art to politics. He recalled that every ethnic group in Harlem had an “intellectual center” where such discussions took place.

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This is not to say that critical black engagement still happens every day, even online. The problem is that it’s much more difficult to parse ideas and opinions through an algorithmic funnel, which often appear shapeless or completely divorced from their context.

“Social media allows more voices to be heard, but is algorithmically targeted based on someone’s interests,” Adams said.

Just as the figures of the Harlem Renaissance raised questions such as the influence of white people on black art and the definition of black art or black artists, especially within white commercial institutions, there are still concerns about the representation of black art and stories. Both things come to mind about Issa Rae’s journey from YouTube to HBO, and Tyler Perry retaining jobs for many black actors despite constant criticism of the quality of his work.

But recent boycotts and criticism of products like the new “Different Worlds” series and the “Michael” film have once again raised legitimate concerns about the state of critical debate in black arts. What it often encounters is parasocial reactions, antagonism, doxxing, or the preciousness of criticism, especially at a time when Hollywood has stopped encouraging Black storytelling.

Adams, whose background in digital studies examines the immanence of black cultural production and fan expression as an example of black digital knowledge production and public intimacy, says the rise of content creators is one component of these responses.

“If they’re content creators and having these conversations because attention to their content may be tied to financial gain, that can sometimes lead to lewdness in a ‘civilized’ society, right?” she explained.

Adams added that this motivation can lead to a need to prove the “most,” “whether that’s the most correct, the most loyal (in terms of fandom), the most knowledgeable, or the most knowledgeable (insert marginalized identity here). People resort to confrontation to prove their ‘most’ rank.” This, in turn, leads to a breakdown in the intellectual curiosity and humility that “underpins critical thinking,” Adams concluded.

Another difference is that, unlike some of the most famous figures of the Harlem Renaissance, social media brought together people from different classes, levels of education and media literacy, and professions with access to a variety of information and art itself. Furthermore, motivations even go beyond monetizing content creation, which Adams points out, and can sometimes be all about supporting and amplifying ideas about Black art and artists while not prioritizing inquiries into their merits.

Instead, Harlem Renaissance figures such as author Zora Neale Hurston, Hughes, and others were able to gather in more intimate spaces with people they knew in their neighborhoods who shared similar interests and academic backgrounds, whether they agreed or not. In fact, they often fail to do so.

In “The Nation”, “Fire!” Commentary in news outlets such as The Crisis, which held a 1926 black symposium asking how “blacks” should be depicted in black art, was a way to interact with other intellectuals; Additionally, just as much of today’s media requires readers to pay a subscription to access basic news, articles about the Harlem Renaissance and even the party in 1972’s Once Upon a Time in Harlem limited participation on intellectual or financial grounds.

“The Harlem Renaissance artists and scholars were still a small, insular group, and maybe most of them went to Howard and had very similar training and conversations,” Adams said.

Beyond this, most of the racially diverse patrons involved in the work and workers of the Harlem Renaissance did not have as many opportunities to learn about their personal lives and thus develop quasi-social relationships with them as fans do today. At the time, black art was also often criticized for its sake and its possibilities, whereas today’s critical discussion seems urgently concerned with the preservation of black art. These differences shape responses to critical discussions—from infighting on BookTok to arguments on Threads.

Still, concerns about the growing lack of black artists and black art are legitimate. Filmmaker Nina Lee says Hollywood’s gatekeepers won’t greenlight certain black films until they’re sure other similar films will make a splash at the box office. But this reality is often used to establish the tenderness of criticism of black art, and this criticism does succeed.

However, as Adams argued, nuanced discussions surrounding the shortcomings of black art can illustrate the etiquette toward whites for the sake of white acceptance. “What’s valuable about criticizing it is still the white gaze focused on saying we have to behave decently and respectably in some way,” she said.

None of this is conducive to the type of “civilized community” that Schuyler reflected in “Once Upon a Time in Harlem.” While some have successfully carved out their own niche spaces for critical debate online, from podcasts to more curated social media discussions and personal substacks, it’s often forgotten that it helps move the arts forward.

This contemporary disconnect makes Greaves’ documentary all the more profound. It deepens the audience’s understanding of healthy, effective debate by reflecting on our not-so-distant past, when too many people were obsessed with self-aggrandizement rather than the roadmap that had been laid out by those who came before us. As Major says in the film, “If they don’t profit from the struggles we go through, they’re going to lose.”

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