We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame.
Hughes announces the new movement in art that is based on racial pride. This quote is significant because it shaped the cultural identity of the Harlem Renaissance. He gives Black artists the power to reject white approval and claim full freedom in their cultural expression.
The old subconscious “white is best” runs through her mind.
This is when Hughes criticizes internalized racism, but the passage is based on the male point of view. We don't hear much from Black women, queer artists, or people living in rural Southern areas. Their lives would help us understand race and art in a deeper way.
The Negro artist works against an undertow of sharp criticism and misunderstanding from his own group and unintentional bribes from the whites.
There are both white and black readers in this group. Hughes wants to show how both of these groups can stop Black people from being creative. His goal is to get artists to fight these pressures and make honest art that comes from Black experience.
be respectable, write about nice people
Hughes shows how the Black community is torn between artistic freedom and politics of respectability. This makes me wonder: should art try to improve the community's image, or should it tell the truth, even if it means showing pain and trauma?
they are not ashamed of him
Hughes praises black people from working-class backgrounds for being proud of their culture. This makes me think of how Black elites often criticize modern artists like hip-hop rappers, even though they are adored around the world. Who gets to say what Black art is "good"?
The whisper of “I want to be white” runs silently through their minds.
This ties in with W.E.B Du Bois's idea of "double consciousness," which says Black people always see themselves through the eyes of white society. How does internalized racism still affect how people are portrayed in cultural and the media?
jazz is their child.
In the 1920s, jazz spread around the world from its roots in African American communities. Hughes proudly says that jazz was created by black people, a rejection of white people's attempt to take it over or make it seem less important.
he family attend a fashionable church where few really colored faces are to be found.
This shows how Black communities divide people into group based on their skin color and social class. Due to the history of slavery, lighter skin was seen as a sign of privilege in the early 20th century. Hughes explains how even black institutions helped to keep racism alive.
But this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America
Black artist in New York were becoming more well-known during the Harlem Renaissance (1920s), when Hughes is writing. Black artist were under pressure to live up to white expectations due to racism and internalized colorism.
Nordic manners, Nordic faces, Nordic hair, Nordic art
"Nordic" describes the racial characteristics and cultural values of white Northern Europeans. Hughes uses the term sarcastically to show how some Black middle class families admired and attempted to imitate whiteness.
American standardization,
This refers to the pressure to fit in with American mainstream white cultural norms. Hughes uses the phrase to critique how black people are pressured by society to give up their unique cultural identities in order to "fit in."