historymatters | As for the literature, painting, and sculpture of Aframericans—such as
there is—it is identical in kind with the literature, painting, and
sculpture of white Americans: that is, it shows more or less evidence
of European influence. In the field of drama little of any merit has
been written by and about Negroes that could not have been written by
whites. The dean of the Aframerican literati written by and about
Negroes that could not have been written by whites. The dean of the
Aframerican literati is W. E. B. Du Bois, a product of Harvard and
German universities; the foremost Aframerican sculptor is Meta Warwick
Fuller, a graduate of leading American art schools and former student
of Rodin; while the most noted Aframerican painter, Henry Ossawa
Tanner, is dean of American painters in Paris and has been decorated by
the French Government. Now the work of these artists is no more
“expressive of the Negro soul”—as the gushers put it—than are the
scribblings of Octavus Cohen or Hugh Wiley.
This, of course, is easily understood if one stops to realize that
the
Aframerican is merely a lampblacked Anglo-Saxon. If the European
immigrant after two or three generations of exposure to our schools,
politics, advertising, moral crusades, and restaurants becomes
indistinguishable from the mass of Americans of the older stock
(despite the influence of the foreign-language press), how much truer
must it be of the sons of Ham who have been subjected to what the
uplifters call Americanism for the last three hundred years.
Aside from
his color, which ranges from very dark brown to pink, your American
Negro is just plain American. Negroes and whites from the same
localities in this country talk, think, and act about the same. Because
a few writers with a paucity of themes have seized upon imbecilities of
the Negro rustics and clowns and palmed them off as authentic and
characteristic Aframerican behavior, the common notion that the black
American is so “different” from his white neighbor has gained wide
currency. The mere mention of the word “Negro” conjures up in the
average white American’s mind a composite stereotype of Bert Williams,
Aunt Jemima, Uncle Tom, Jack Johnson, Florian Slappey, and the various
monstrosities scrawled by the cartoonists. Your average Aframerican no
more resembles this stereotype than the average American resembles a
composite of Andy Gump, Jim Jeffries, and a cartoon by Rube Goldberg.
Again, the Aframerican is subject to the same economic and social
forces that mold the actions and thoughts of the white Americans. He is
not living in a different world as some whites and a few Negroes would
have me believe. When the jangling of his Connecticut alarm clock gets
him out of his Grand Rapids bed to a breakfast similar to that eaten by
his white brother across the street; when he toils at the same or
similar work in mills, mines, factories, and commerce alongside the
descendants of Spartacus, Robin Hood, and Erik the Red; when he wears
similar clothing and speaks the same language with the same degree of
perfection; when he reads the same Bible and belongs to the Baptist,
Methodist, Episcopal, or Catholic church; when his fraternal
affiliations also include the Elks, Masons, and Knights of Pythias;
when he gets the same or similar schooling, lives in the same kind of
houses, owns the same Hollywood version of life on the screen; when he
smokes the same brands of tobacco and avidly peruses the same puerile
periodicals; in short, when he responds to the same political, social,
moral, and economic stimuli in precisely the same manner as his white
neighbor, it is sheer nonsense to talk about “racial differences” as
between the American black man and the American white man. Glance over
a Negro newspaper (it is printed in good Americanese) and you will find
the usual quota or crime news, scandal, personals, and uplift to be
found in the average white newspaper—which, by the way, is more widely
read by the Negroes than is the Negro press. In order to satisfy the
cravings of an inferiority complex engendered by the colorphobia of the
mob, the readers of the Negro newspapers are given a slight dash of
racialistic seasoning. In the homes of the black and white Americans of
the same cultural and economic level one finds similar furniture,
literature, and conversation. How, then, can the black American be
expected to produce art and literature dissimilar to that of the white
American?
Consider Coleridge-Taylor, Edward Wilmot Blyden, and Claude McKay, the
Englishmen; Pushkin, the Russian; Bridgewater, the Pole; Antar, the
Arabian; Latino, the Spaniard; Dumas, père and fils,the Frenchmen; and
Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charles W. Chestnut, and James Weldon Johnson,
the Americans. All Negroes; yet their work shows the impress of
nationality rather than race. They all reveal the psychology and
culture of their environment—their color is incidental. Why should
Negro artists of America vary from the national artistic norm when
Negro artists in other countries have not done so? If we can foresee
what kind of white citizens will inhabit this neck of the woods in the
next generation by studying the sort of education and environment the
children are exposed to now, it should not be difficult to reason that
the adults of today are what they are because of the education and
environment they were exposed to a generation ago. And that education
and environment were about the same for blacks and whites. One
contemplates the popularity of the Negro-art hokum and murmurs,
“How-come?”
This nonsense is probably the last stand or the old myth palmed off by
Negrophobists for all these many years, and recently rehashed by the
sainted Harding, that there are “fundamental, eternal, and inescapable
differences” between white and black Americans. That there are Negroes
who will lend this myth a helping hand need occasion no surprise. It
has been broadcast all over the world by the vociferous scions of
slaveholders, “scientists” like Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard, and
the patriots who flood the treasure of the Ku Klux Klan; and is
believed, even today, by the majority of free, white citizens. On this
baseless premise, so flattering to the white mob, that the blackamoor
is inferior and fundamentally different, is erected the postulate that
he must needs be peculiar; and when he attempts to portray life through
the medium of art, it must of necessity be a peculiar art. While such
reasoning may seem conclusive to the majority of Americans, it must be
rejected with a loud guffaw by intelligent people.