The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain

The most significant symbol in Hughes’s essay is the “racial mountain” cited in the title. In the introductory paragraph, Hughes describes the mountain as the “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” (Paragraph 1). To Hughes, the internal “race toward whiteness” (Paragraph 1) is part of the two other issues he names here: the tendency of American society to push all people towards assimilation and to minimize racial individuality. American society, to Hughes, is difficult environment for a Black artist who desires to make art that is separate from “American standardization” or that “urge within” to become more White.

To Hughes, the mountain is an inherently inhospitable environment in which the Black artist must overcome both their internal desire to be White. The difficulty of confronting the mountain also involves the external pressures from White people who reward assimilation and from Black people who critique so-called inappropriate expressions of Blackness. Ideally, to Hughes, the Black artist will “stand on top of the mountain, free within [themselves]” (Paragraph 14). Overcoming the racial mountain takes self-acceptance and self-love, which enables Black artists to “express [their] dark-skinned selves without fear or shame” (Paragraph 14).

The image of the mountain contrasts to most of the other images in the essay, most of which relate to suburban and urban American life, not the natural environment. As such, the mountain stands figuratively apart in the reader’s imagination, which emphasizes the idea that the mountain is difficult to climb for most Black artists. In addition, the scale of this metaphorical mountain helps capture, in the reader’s mind, the severity of the issue. The mountain is not merely a rock or a difficult road; it is an obstacle that requires a certain skill set and set of tools to overcome. The use of this metaphor to title and frame the essay communicates gravity; the act of mountain-climbing, literal and figurative, is a dangerous one, but the rewards of such an accomplishment are great.