The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain

“But this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America—this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.” 

This statement is the thesis of Hughes’s essay, and he argues that Black artists must reach the top of a racial mountain if they are to be authentically successful. One of the most important aspects of this central claim is Hughes’s connection of the “race toward whiteness” with being “as much American as possible.” By explicitly linking being White with being American, Hughes provides context for many of his later points regarding the difficulty of finding “racial individuality.”

“And so the word white comes to be unconsciously a symbol of all virtues. It holds for the children beauty, morality, and money.” 

Hughes aims for his reader to understand the intimate connections between Whiteness and other standards of success in US society. He makes this point explicit in order to support his claims about Black creativity. If Whiteness influences standards of beauty, then Black artists are stifled by an inability to see themselves as beautiful; if Whiteness influences morality, then Black creatives are limited by a society that deems them incapable of being ethical and intellectual. Finally, if Whiteness is symbolic of money, then Black success can only be measured by financial success, which involves seeking the approval of White critics and patrons.

“He is never taught to see that beauty. He is taught rather not to see it, or if he does, to be ashamed of it when it is not according to Caucasian patterns.” 

Hughes makes this particular point several times throughout the essay. One of the greatest challenges to Black artists, Hughes believes, is self-doubt and self-hatred. To Hughes, American society guides Black artists to believe they are not beautiful nor capable of creating anything beautiful. These limitations impact the creative capacity of Black artists.

“And perhaps these common people will give to the world its truly great Negro artist, the one who is not afraid to be himself.”

One of the underlying arguments in Hughes’s piece revolves around the idea that working class Black people are more willing to love themselves and experience pure joy. Because they are not hindered by White standards, working class Black people live in freedom. Throughout his life, Hughes wrote poetry that attempted to both see and speak to this “common” class; this quote supports his perspective that Black people growing up in a culture that does not encourage White assimilation are more likely to be creatively successful.

“To these the Negro artist can give his racial individuality, his heritage of rhythm and warmth, and his incongruous humor that so often, as in the Blues, becomes ironic laughter mixed with tears.” 

In this quote, Hughes describes the kind of art he hopes to see Black artists produce. This description illuminates what Hughes means by a “racial” art: it holds the tensions felt and lived by the Black community, with both warmth and tears. The language of warmth is in direct opposition to many of Hughes’s descriptions of Whiteness in the essay, which is linked to coldness.

“The road for the serious black artist, then, who would produce a racial art is most certainly rocky and the mountain is high. Until recently he received almost no encouragement for his work from either white or colored people.” 

As Hughes prepares to conclude the essay, he makes one of the only explicit references to the “mountain” of the title of the essay. Black artists work between two opposite poles, where there is little encouragement from neither White nor Black audiences. The complex reasons for this tension are part of the reason for Hughes’s essay; he not only wants to convince younger Black artists to move towards self-love and to embrace their racial individuality, but he also wants to convince a wider audience that notions of fine art should include authentic Black art.

“The Negro artist works against an undertow of sharp criticism and misunderstanding from his own group and unintentional bribes from the whites.” 

Hughes states that Black art is difficult to produce thanks to the social dynamics and the politics of the United States. In several places in the essay, Hughes condemns Black people for their “criticism” and for their misunderstanding of what Black art should be. Much of this negativity, Hughes believes, is due to Black people’s misplaced desire to assimilate into White society. Meanwhile, Hughes derides the White audiences who “bribe” Black artists into producing art that caters to White conceptions of Blackness. In both cases, the reactions of the audiences limit Black artistic potential.

“Yet (excepting the work of Du Bois) ‘Cane’ contains the finest prose written by a Negro in America. And like the singing of Robeson, it is truly racial.” 

Hughes describes different Black artists and discusses whether or not they have achieved the kind of “truly racial” art that he believes is best. This particular argument revolves around the novel Cane, which was received poorly when it was written in part because of its honest, loving portrayals of Black peoples’ lives. Hughes uses this example because Cane as a text represents the ways that society limits Black artists who are producing authentically.

“I am as sincere as I know how to be in these poems and yet after every reading I answer questions like these from my own people: Do you think Negroes should always write about Negroes? I wish you wouldn’t read some of your poems to white folks. How do you find anything interesting in a place like a cabaret? Why do you write about black people? You aren’t black. What makes you do so many jazz poems?” 

In this confessional, personal moment in the essay, Hughes describes the questions he receives. His tone is sarcastic and disappointed. To Hughes, these questions illustrate Hughes’s points about how Black audiences limit the potential of Black artists. They critique the kind of poetry that Hughes writes, disapproving of his refusal to seek White approval for his work. This passage marks a turn in his argument, since some of Hughes’s readers may be the people who asked such questions; ideally, those readers will be able to shift their own opinions after connecting the questions to the inhibition of artistic honesty.

“But jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul—the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.” 

In his poetry, Hughes is well-known for integrating aspects of jazz music, both in rhythm and references. This statement explains his philosophical belief in the importance of jazz as a musical form that is an “inherent expression” of Black life. Jazz is a representation of the struggle to maintain faith and joy in a world that is painful and exhausting.

“Years of study under white teachers, a lifetime of white books, pictures, and papers, and white manners, morals, and Puritan standards made her dislike the spirituals. And now she turns up her nose at jazz and all its manifestations—likewise the almost everything else distinctly racial.” 

Hughes reveals his attitude towards the White educational system and the sociopolitical messaging typical of American society. The ways that Black people are taught to believe in White “manners, morals, and… standards” are critical to understanding many of the issues facing Black artists. For Hughes, it is important for Black people to be comfortable with ideas that are “distinctly racial” rather than dismissing them because they do not embrace Whiteness.

“But, to my mind, 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,’ hidden in the aspirations of his people, to ‘Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro—and beautiful’?” 

This description refers to the opening anecdote about a young Black artist who wants to be White and thus denies the beauty and possibility of his Blackness. In this section Hughes goes deeper into this point, connecting the role of the Black artist to that of social reformer, someone who can shift the “aspirations of his people” by illustrating and inspiring self-love. This belief is observable in Hughes’s own work as a poet and artist over the course of his lifetime, as he wrote in ways that embraced and celebrated Blackness.

“We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs.” 

As Hughes concludes his essay, he refers to the image of the tom-tom, a small drum that represents the heartbeat of Black life in America. If Black artists can produce art that embraces Blackness, they will have to be able to hold the tensions of their own beauty and ugliness, happiness and pain. When Hughes employs the image of the tom-tom, he reminds the reader of the various conflicting aspects of being Black and being human. Through music, like other forms of art, Black people can express the complexities of their experiences in a White society.