The Negro Artist And The Racial Mountain

Langston Hughes famous essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”, is an article over racial walls in an artist’s life. This article was written in 1926. He starts off with the phrase an artist expressed “I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet.” He takes this statement and explains more of why the artist spoke these words. Langston Hughes felt downhearted about this comment. The artist he speaks of comes from a “Negro middle class” as Hughes called it. The boy came from a comfortable family. His father worked daily while his mother occasionally worked. They attended a Baptist church every Sunday and he accompanied a mixed school. In his household he was always reminded that the white way is the “right way”. American standardization caused
What I mean by the “black way” is the poor way. This is the way his peers, household, and everyone else that surrounded him viewed blacks. Just simply as poor, nothing more. When his siblings would behave poorly the mother would state “Don’t be like niggers.” His own kind looked down upon itself. Although everyone else had their views on the black race Langston expressed his differ in this essay. He took pride in his race. I feel that he looked upon the statement “I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet” poorly. Langston claimed to be proud of his heredity and he wished more would think the same. He spoke boldly of the African American race in this essay. Langston Hughes proclaimed that the lower class black population were more in touch with their heredity. “The eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul” is the statement he used to describe the passion of the lower colored class. The lower class were more aware of who they were and took pride in every bit of it. He spoke highly of them and looked down on the middle class. “The closed ears of the colored near intellectuals.” This daring sentence shows how he feels about the colored middle class. Not so