Many an
upper-class, conservative Negro, embracing the doctrine that the
white man is superior to the black, accepts Nordic standards, regrets
his dusky hue, shapes his life toward proving that his soul, at least,
is white or near-white. More radical Negroes, notably the younger
school of Negro writers, resent the assumption of white superiority,
feel that black culture is different from but on an equal plane with
white, maintain that the future of the colored race lies in its proudly
being as black as it is painted. Thus readers of the Pittsburgh Courier
read last week an article by Author Langston
Hughes, bitterly assailing those members of his race whom he
considers a pale reflection of white civilization. Meeting
upper-level Negroes of Washington, D. C., Mr. Hughes found them
critical
of Jean Toomer, Rudolph Fisher and Zora Hurston, Negro novelists, of
many another Negro author who has written realistic, often tragic
narratives of the Negro masses. “Why doesn’t Jean Toomer write
about nice people?” asked the Washingtonians. Why didn’t Rudolph
Fisher’s City of Refuge* deal with “decent folks”? And
they objected to Negro Artist Winold Reiss’s drawings of Negroes
because he “made his colored people look so colored.” Of
the whole radical school of young Negro authors they said, pityingly,
disapprovingly: “Lord help these bad New Negroes.” To which
Author Hughes made venomous reply: To those who objected that Artist
Reiss had pictured colored schoolteachers in regrettably dark
tints he replied: “Should all teachers resemble the high-yellow
ladies dominating the Washington school system?” Of the
upper-crust Negroes as a class he observed: “Many of the so-called
best Negroes are in a sort of nouveau riche class, so from the
snobbishness of their positions they hold the false belief that if the
stories of Fisher were only about better class people they would be
better stories.” As to these “best” Negroes’ complaint
that their lives are not made the subject of Negro literature, Mr.
Hughes thought that they were fortunate in being neglected. For, said
he, a “really powerful” story would expose “their
pseudo culture, their slavish devotion to Nordic standards, their
snobbishness, their detachment from the Negro masses and their vast
sense of importance to themselves. . . . [Such a book] would be
more wrathfully damned than Nigger Heaven† at present vibrating
throughout the land in its eleventh edition.” Author Hughes is
well qualified to speak for the “bad New Negroes,” being himself
prominent among them. Though still a student at Lincoln University, he
has already published two books of poems, The Weary Blues and Fine
Clothes to the Jew. Readers of the Pittsburgh Courier looked forward
to its next issue in which Mr. Hughes was to continue his criticism of
Negroes who “still think that white people are better than colored
people.” *Published in the conservative Atlantic Monthly. †By Author Carl Van Vechten, Caucasian, who took up Negroes
as an esthetic fad, then pictured them as depraved, in a book full of
Harlem dives, dope peddlers, degenerates.
