Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain - Langston Hughes

The Struggle of the Negro Artist

• The Negro artist faces criticism and misunderstanding from both their own community and unintentional pressure from white individuals.
• Jean Toomer faced opposition from both colored and white people for his work "Cane," despite its praise from critics.
• The author anticipates the rise of the Negro theater and the emergence of a school of colored artists, as well as the growth of Negro dancers and singers.
• The author's poems are often racial in theme and treatment, drawing inspiration from jazz and the expressions of Negro life in America.
• The Philadelphia clubwoman is ashamed of her race's creations and dislikes the portrayal of anything distinctly racial, reflecting a subconscious "white is best" mentality.
• The younger Negro artist is urged to use their art to combat the aspiration to be white and instead embrace their own racial identity.
• The author criticizes the black poet who wants to be recognized as a poet, not a Negro poet, and the colored artist who avoids painting Negro faces due to fear of their un-whiteness.
• The author urges the near-intellectuals to embrace and understand Negro jazz, literature, and art, and encourages them to appreciate their own beauty.
• The younger Negro artists aim to express their individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame, regardless of the opinions of white or colored people.
• The text includes references to Countee Cullen, Raquel Meller, Clara Smith, Charles Waddell Chestnutt, and Paul Laurence Dunbar.
• Countee Cullen was a classically trained African American writer who adhered to European traditions of form and meter in his poems.
• Raquel Meller was a popular Spanish singer and actress, while Clara Smith was an African American blues singer known for incorporating vaudeville and comedy routines into her shows.