SECTION 2: PASSAGE IDENTIFICATION - Langston Hughes, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain"

Question 1

notes

Answer 1

• acceptance of Black identity and asserting Black beauty
• fighting internalized racism
• critiques Black artists for trying to adhere to white standards as opposed to embracing their culture
  
  • “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, to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.”
• talks about complexities of the Black middle class
• Black artists are being ignored by white people, leading them to be ignored by Black people
• places jazz as an “inherent expression of Negro life in America”