White patronage of Harlem operated through an exoticizing, zoo-like gaze

Evidence

Van Vechten was the Harlem Renaissance’s most ubiquitous White patron, a man as curiously passionate about being around and showing off Black people as zookeepers are about being around and showing off their exotic pets. In the past few years, European artists arriving in New York had been calling on Van Vechten to take them on the “safari” of Harlem, as the tourists and tour guide more or less understood it. Now, Van Vechten gave them the tour in a book, Nigger Heaven. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 843

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘safari’ of Harlem as touristic consumption connects to the reader’s own framing of segregationist consumption of Black culture; also dovetails with the immodesty piece’s ‘gaze’ theme.