Within Langston Hughes’s essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” Hughes confronts the divisive question of Negro artists’ aesthetics during the Harlem Renaissance. There were two main camps in terms of content and portrayal of the Negro. Hughes was in the faction that believed the artist had the right to depict Negroes in both positive and negative lights, to portray all aspects of the Negro rather than just the positive images. His essay called the Negro artists’ desire to bleach their work, to make it “white,” was the racial mountain they had to overcome.
He begins by describing a statement made by a young Negro poet: “I want to be a poet— not a Negro poet.” Hughes argues this statement reveals the desire to be a “white poet” or, even more disturbing, to be “white” (964). Hughes saw this statement as a fear to be a Negro, to accept his own identity, his own race, and find comfort in his own skin. Hughes then tries to explain the cause of this fear as coming from an socio-economical standpoint.
Hughes describes the middle class Negro’s environmental influence about the definition and connotation of “white”– he explains that the middle class Negro families continue to segregate themselves from “niggers” and try to bleach their behaviors and realities as much as possible. Hughes states, “The word white comes to be unconsciously a symbol of all the virtues. It holds for the children beauty, morality, and money” (964). This effect on the Negro artists’ perspectives of themselves and their own work is detrimental to their own identities and will thus prevent them from becoming “a great poet” (964).
Instead, Hughes finds the “low-down folks” to be the most well-adjusted to their artistic and creative endeavors. These are the people who “are not too important to themselves or the community, or too well fed, or too learned to watch the lazy world go round” (965). These people are the ones whose “joy runs, bang! into ecstasy” (965). Their ability to create worthwhile art is not inhibited by the desire to become white. Hughes claims that “these common people will give to the world its truly great Negro artist, the one who is not afraid of himself” (965).
Hughes also examines the “racial mountain” by confronting the hypocrisies of “Nordicized Negro intelligensia” (966). Hughes describes his own interactions with negroes who refuse to patronize negro artists unless they are working or creating within the “white” arts. As an example, he includes his interaction with a “prominent Negro clubwoman” who refuses to pay to listen to Clara Smith sing Negro folksongs, but paid $11 to listen to Raquel Miller sing “Andalusian popular songs” (465). It is this and other similar behaviors that the Negro artist must overcome, it is this and other situations that compose the racial mountain. The discrimination of Negroes against Negro art is caused by fear, the fear of their own “un-whiteness” and so, Hughes says “it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders” to change through the force of his art that old whispering ‘I want to be white.’” (967). Hughes promotes the freedom of artists to express themselves without outside influence, to focus on expressing their “dark-skinned selves without fear or shame,” and to appreciate their own identities rather than strive for “whiteness” (967).
What is slightly problematic about Hughes’s call to artistic freedom is that by calling for a particular behavior in Negro artists and by denouncing Negro artists’ who mimic or emulate “Nordic” arts, he himself has imposed a restriction on the absolute freedom he claims Negro artists should have.
Hughes seems to have misinterpreted the young poet’s statement at the beginning of his essay. This statement could very well represent a poet’s desire to not to be defined by his race, but to be appreciated for his work. An example of just such a Negro poet is Jean Toomer, who often resisted being classified as white or black. Thus, Hughes may have tried to encourage a type of emancipation from the necessity of being a “white” artist for many young Negro artists, but by doing so, he promoted the separation of art and created a type of restriction on these artists, promoted the restriction of them from any “white” artlike endeavors lest they be considered any less of a Negro. In this sense, Hughes may have identified and overcome the racial mountain, but in its place, he left a different obstacle– a racial river, one in which artists can navigate within and over, but may find themselves overpowered and swept away.
I am glad you wrote about this, Angela. As you say, Hughes’s sentiment that the young poet’s statement reveals the desire to be a “white poet” or, even more disturbing, to be “white” (964), distracted me throughout this piece. Is it enough to be known only by the work? Or is the bar for poetry set by white artists, and therefore a differentiation is necessary? If that’s the case, how does this further deepen existing chasms? Your term “racial river” seems appropriate here. To continue that metaphor, what kind of art has the power to bridge it? I posted a close reading of one of Sterling A. Brown’s poems. In his Oxford biography he is quoted as saying, “I want to be in the best American traditions. I want to be accepted as a whole man. My standards are not white. My standards are not black. My standards are human.” But I have the sense that Hughes would disagree with this attempt, arguing that traditionally human standards are in fact “white” standards. Is Hughes’s view too narrow, or Brown’s goal obtuse?