Schuyler and Hughes: Analyzed
...n influence no matter what the artists race is. Skin color, according to Schuyler is coincidental; it is the social circumstances of the Negro that define his art and not the pigmentation of his skin. However, if we look at Langston Hughes response to Schuyler’s essay, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, we see a completely different interpretation of what art is and what art should be. Hughes is appalled by the before mentioned statement “I want to be a poet- not a Negro poet.” In essence this statement denies the Negro of his heritage, of his culture, and of himself according to Hughes. By denying ones own blackness, one must in essence want to be another race, in this case, Hughes exhibits notions that the Negro artist that does not wish to be known as such wants to be white instead. It is class however that truly defines this need to be everything that is white. According to some blacks, says Hughes, whiteness equals purity and higher social standing while to be black is low class and ignorant. The middle and upper classes in the Negro community are those that strive to be white, with all that that entails, and these are the classes that primarily create the art of the Negro community. The proletariat, on the other hand, is those who strive to please no one, they are who they are and they do not care about fitting into the mold of a white society. The art that is created by them is what Hughes calls Negro art. However there is very little art that actually comes out of this lower working class, and when it does Hughes feels that it is greatly under appreciated and even overlooked until it is too late. The only art created by Negro’s that succeeds according to Hughes is that which is heavily influenced by white art throughout American. Therefore, Negro art is a nearly extinct phenomenon in Hughes views. We see in modern artistic merit a shift in the paradigm of societies perceptions of Negro art forms. An apparent rise in the demand for so-called Negro stylized art in poetry, writing, and music has drastically changed the American populations views on the term blackness. Today, society equates blackness with “coolness,” a drastic change from the apparent views of the America of the 1920’s as Langston Hughes writes. However, George Samuel Schuyler would refute that the rise in so-called Negro art in America is merely a result of the artists cultural surroundings; namely American culture as a whole, asserting that Negro art in America does not exist. However we cannot deny the strong influences of the black...