Final Project

be clear, with the steadily narrowing limit of supportable PoPuhtiOn the reproductlve obligation of sex lessens, its u n a b a t d emotional compulsions tend to assume the propor- tlons of a terrib!e-if ecstatic-enslavement. Already this appears in the current saturation of our art and literature wlth aspects of the struggle to r i d ourselves, by ration- alizat:on, of this most anclent type of befuddlement. It 1 s suggested in the querulous resort of certain of our Intel- hgentsia to Europe, where achievement is not yet cleared of the mingled odor of amorousness and alcohol wlth which for five thousand years I t has been penetrated. Under com- petent social scrutiny the confused and mcreasingly unsat- isfactory handling of what are called sex problems is shown more and more to be involved with artificially induced extra- ’nlological states of sex attractlon. Inevitably with the shrinkage of the reproductive obligation these extra-biologic states will be found to be of diminishing interest and effectiveness.

With our characteristlcally American sentimentality in respect to sex, it is natural that the instinctive urge to re- duce the emotional obfuscations of amorousness to some- thing like their biologic proportions would be indirect and more or less unacknowledged. The numerically popular sue- cess of the movement toward prohibition, though it draws a considerable quota of the experientially convlnced, quite certaillly draws other numbers motivated by the instinct to seek relief from urges that exceed their function, by de- stroying artificial excitements. And for a t l e a s t five thou- sand years extra-biologlc amorousness has been identi- fied wlth alcohol t h a t o u r popular phraseology scarcely takes account of one without the other. It is not inevitable that such general and instinctive movements as this one f o r t h e riddance of alcohol should be altogether wise in their pro- cedure or even widely intelligent. It is normal to all mass movement that the individual assent or resistance to any deep-seated urge should appear so variously motivated. There are no doubt numbers of the adherents of prohibition whose subconscious recompense is the satisfactlon theY take in the deprlvations of other people; lust as there are ardent protagolllsts who under the slogan of personal liberty are m a s k ~ n g a love of drunkenness-alcoholic or amorous-for its own sake. Nor does I t affect the essentlals of t h e problerll one n a y or another that much of the practical resistance t o the Volstead Act i; mere adolescent protest against reg- ulatory dlsciplme. the a s yet unsociallzed need of doing what we like because we lrke it.

The varlety and lncongrulty of the reasons for and azainst a r e only f u r t h e r evidences of the power of deep- seated social urges to transcend all our logic and Intelligence.

TO any one who will take the pains to uncover the early phases of the prohibition movement, as revealed in the pamphlets, public pronouncements, and programs of t h a t time, it will be plain that its biologic derivation was then much more nearly conscious than it is now. Thls also fol- lows the law of the emergence of wars, the generative causes of which tend, a s t h e r e a l i t y of war approaches, to dmappear under a cloud of incidental emotionalism. That Frances Wlllard herself was perfectly clear as to the com- plete implication of all our hopes of social betterment in t h e removal of t h e one great source of moral and intel- lectual befudddlement, I think there can be no doubt. In the effort to avoid or uproot whatever blurs the edge of reality-drink, or lust, o r war, or moral enthusiasm-all of which are more or less interchangeable individual mc- tivation, it i s n a t u r a l t h a t d r i n k should be t h e first t o be obJectively attacked. It presents a visible measure of eco- nomic convenience a s a hand-hold, and strategically under- mines the others. With the elimination of alcohol amor- ousness loses much of its enticement, and it is quite pos- sible that the waning popularity of war is partly owed t o its diminished opportunity for indulging the confluent ap- petites for drink and lust. That the effort t o eliminate the first three occasions of emotional obfuscation should be the occasion of a n accession of the last, most insidious intoxica- tion, is perhaps the worst thing that can be said of it. F o r any moral enthusiasm invariably gives rise to counter-en- thuslasms of immorality, against which the first frequently arrests itself, sometimes to the degree of temporary defeat. As this appears to be the present state of the prohibition movement, fallmg over itself in a too rapid progress toward Its goal, this would seem t o be the moment f o r both sides to abate their mutual fury of attack in a mutual recognl- tion of t h e n a t u r e of the urge in which the movement takes its rise. It might prove in the end as doubtful an advantage to escape too soon a s t o h u g too long, and on mistaken premises, a tradltional release and incitement. One feels certain that a completely rationalized society would \.vaste no more time in argument, but assign drinking privileges in conformity with demonstrable inability to per- f o r m a biologic function or achieve a preferred emotional release without it. But then ours is not, possibly never has 1 a yenulne desire to be, a completely rationalized society.

The Negro rtist and the ountain E y LANGSTON HUGHES

NE of the most promising of the young Negro poets eald to me once, “I want to be a poet-not a Negro

poet,” meaning, I believe, “I want to write like a white poet”; me2,ning subconsciously, “I would like to be a white poet”; meaning behind that, “I would like to be white.” And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been a f r a i d of being himself. And I doubted then that, with his desire to run away spiritually from his race, this boy would ever be a g r e a t poet. But this is the moun- tain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America “this urge wlthin the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American

standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.

But let us look at the immediate background of t h i s young poet. HIS family is of what I suppose one would call the Negro middle class: people who are by no means rich yet never uncomfortable nor hungry-smug, contented, respectable folk, members of the Baptist church. The father goes to work every morning. He is a chief steward at a large white club. The mother sometimes does fancy sewing or supervises parties for the rich families of t h e town. The children go to a mixed school. I n t h e home they read white papers and magazines. And the mother often

says “Don’t be like niggers” when the children are bad. A frequent phrase from the father IS, “Look how well a white man does thmgs.” And so t h e word white comes t o be unconsciously a symbol of all the virtues. It holds lor the children beauty, morahty, and money. The whisper of “I want to be white” runs silently through their minds. This young poet’s home is, I believe, a falrly typical home of the colored middle class. One sees immediately how difficult i t would be for an artist born in such a home to interest himself In interpreting the beauty of hls o w n pee- ple. He is never taught to see that beauty. H e 1s t a u g h t rather not to see it, or if he does, to be ashamed of It when it is not according to Caucaslan patterns.

For racial culture the home of self-styled “high- class” Negro has nothing better to offer. Instead there will perhaps be more aping of things white than in a less cul- tured or less wealthy home. The father is perhaps doc- tor, lawyer, landowner, or politician. The mother may be a social worker, or a teacher, or she may do nothmg and have a maid. Father is often dark but he has usually marrled the lightest woman he could find. The family at- tend a fashionable church where few really colored faces are to be found. And they themselves draw color line. In the North they go to white theaters and white movips. And En the South they have at least two cars and a house “like white folks.” Nordic manners, Nordic faces, Nordic hair, Nordic art (if any), and an Episcopal heaven. A very high mountain indeed for the would-be racial artist to climb in order to discover himself and hls people.

Eut then there are the low-down folks, the so-called common element, and they are the majority-may the Lord be praised! The people who have their nip of gln on Sat- urday nights and are not too important to themselves or the community, or too well fed, or too learned to watch t h e lazy world go round. They live on Seventh Street in Washington or State Street in Chicago and they do not particularly care whether they are like white folks or any- body else. Their joy runs, bang! into ecstasy. Their religion soars to shout. Work maybe a little today, rest a little tomorrow. Play awhile. Sing awhi!e. 0, let’s dance! These common people are not afraid of spirituals, as for a long time thelr more intellectual brethren were, and jazz is their child. They fnrnlsh a wealth of cniorful, distinctive material for any artist because they still hold their own individuality in the face of American standard- izatldns. And perhaps these common people will give to t h e world its truly great Negro artist, the one who is not a f r a i d t o be himself. Whereas the better-class Negro would tell the artist what to do, the people at least let him alone when he does appear. And they are not ashamed of him- if they know he exists a t all. And they accept what beauty 1s their own without question.

Certainly there is, for the American Negro artist who can escape the restrictions the more advanced among his own group would p u t upon him, a g r e a t field of unused rnaterlal ready for his art. Without going outside his race, and even among the better classes with their “vvhlte” cul- ture and conscious American manners, b u t stdl Negro enough to be dlfferent, there is sufficient matter to furnlsh a black artist with a lifetlme of creative work. And when he chooses to touch on the relations between Negroes and whites in this country with their innumerable overtones

undertones. surely, and especially for literature and the drama, there is an inexaust~ble supply of themes at hand.

To these the Negro artist can give his raclal individuality, his heritage of rhythm and warmth, and his incongruous humor that so often, as in the Blues, becomes ironic laughter mixed with tears. But let us again at the rnountaln.

A promment Negro clubwoman in Philadelphia paid eleven dollars t o hear Raquel Meller sing Andaluslan pop- ular songs. But she told me a few weeks before she would not think of going to hear “that woman,” Clara Smith, a great black artist, sing Negro folksongs. And many an upper-class Negro church, even now, would not dream of employing a spiritual in its servlces. The drab melodies In white folks’ hymnbooks are much to be preferred. “We want to worship the Lord correctly and quietly. We don’t believe in ‘shouting.’ Let’s be dull like t h e Nordics,” they say, in effect.

The road for the serious black artist, then, who would produce a racial art is most certainly rocky and the moun- tain is high. Until recently he received almost no encour- agement for his work from either white o r colored people. The fine novels of Chestnutt go out of print with neither race notlcing their passing. The quaint charm and humor of Dunbar’s dialect verse brought to him, in his day, largely the same kind of encouragement one would give a side- show freak (A colored man writing poetry! How od:’!) .:;- a clown (How amusing!).

The present vogue in things Negro, although ~t may do as much harm as good for the budding colored artist, has at least done this: it has brought him forclbly to the attention of his own people among whom for so long, unless the other race had noticed him beforehand, he was a prophet with little honor. I understand that Char1t.f: Gllpln acted for years in Negro theaters without any speciai acclaim from his own, but when Broadway gave him eight curtain calls, Negroes, too, began to beat a tin pan in his honor. 1 know a young colored wrlter, a manual worker by day, who had been writing well f o r t h e colored magazines for some years, but it was not until he recently broke into the white publications and his first book was accepted by prominent New York publisher that the “best” Negroes In his city took the trouble to discover that he lived there. Then almost immediately they decided to give a grand dinner for him. But the society ladies were careful to whisper to his mother that perhaps she’d better not come. They were not sure she would have an evening gown.

The Negro artist works against an undertow of sharp criticism and misunderstandlng from his own group and unintentional bribes from the whites. “0, be respectable, write about nice people, show how good we are,” s a y the Negroes. “Be stereotyped, don’t go too far, don’t shatter o u r illusions about you, don’t amuse us too seriously. W-e will pay you,” say the whites. Eoth would have told Jean Toomer not to write “Cane.” The colored people did not praise I t . The white people did not buy it. Most of the colored people who did read “Cane” hate it. They are afraid of it. Although the critics gave it good reviews t h e public remained indifferent. Yet (excepting the work of DuBois) “Cane” contalns the finest prose written by a Negro in America. And like the singing of Robeson, i t is truly racial.

But in spite of the Nordicized Negro intelligentsia and the desires of some white editors we have an honest Amer- ican Negro literature already with us. Now I await the rise of the Negro theater. Our folk music, having achieved world-wide fame, offers itself to the genius of the great in-

694 The Nation [Vol. 122, No. 3181

dividual American Negro composer who is t o come. And within the next decade I expect to see the work of a grow- ing school of colored artists who paint and model the beauty of dark faces and create with new technique the expres- sions of their own soul-world. And the Negro dancers who will dance like flame and the singers who will con- tinue to carry our songs to all who listen-they will be with us in even greater numbers tomorrow.

Most of my own poems are racial in theme and treat- ment, derlved irom the life I know. In many of them I try to grasp and hold some of the meanings and rhythms of Jazz. I am sincere as I know how to be in these poems and yet after every reading I answer questions like these from my own people: Do you think Negroes should always write about Negroes? I wish you wouldn’t read some of your poems to white folks. How do you find anything in- teresting in a place like a cabaret? Why do you w r i t e about black people? You aren’t black. What makes you do s o many jazz poems?

But jazz to me IS one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul-the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile. Yet the Ph~ladelphia clubwoman is ashamed to say that her race created it and she does not like me to write about it. The old subconsclous “whlte is best” runs through her mind. Years ‘of study under white teachers, a life- time of white books, pictures, and papers, and white man- ners, morals, and Puritan standards made her dislike the spirituals. And now she turns up h e r nose a t jazz and all its manifestations-likewise almost everything else dis- tinctly racial. She doesn’t care for the Winold Reiss por- t r a i t s of Negroes because they are “too Negro.” She does not want a true picture of herself from anybody. She wants the artist to flatter her, to make the white world believe

that all Negroes are as smug and as near white in soul as she wants to be. B u t , t o my mind, it is the duty of t h e younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, to change through the force ‘of his art t h a t old whispering “I want to be white,” hidden in the aspirations of his people, to “Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro-and beautiful !”

So I am ashamed for the black poet who says, “I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet,” as though his own racial world were not as interesting as any other world. I a m ashamed, too, f o r t h e colored artist who runs from the paintmg of Negro faces to the painting of sunsets after the manner of the academicians because he fears the strange un-whiteness of his own features. An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.

Let the blare of Negro jazz bands and the bellowing voice of Bessie Smith singing Blues penetrate the closed e a r s of the colored near-intellectuals until they listen and perhaps understand. Let Paul Robeson singing Water Boy, and Rudolph Fisher writing about the streets of Harlem, and Jean Toomer holding the heart of Georgia in his hands, and Aaron Douglas drawing strange black fantasies cause the smug Negro middle class to turn from their white, respectable, ordinary books and papers to catch a glimmer of their own beauty. We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people a r e pleased we a r e glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we a r e beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom- tom laughs. If colored people a r e pleased we a r e glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn’t matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.

[ I n last week’s Nation N e g r o a r t w a s dzscussed f r o m a n opposing poant o f v i e w b y G e o r g e S. Schuyler.]

T h e Color Question in South Africa By RUTH S. ALEXANDER

[ T h e color problem in S o u t h A f r a c a has b e e n m a d e m o r e a c u t e b y t h e polacy of t h e p r e s e n t G o v e r n m e n t , whwh frankly f a v o r s r e p r e s s i o n o f b o t h t h e n a t i v e a n d t h e In- dian anhabitants. The Government aams to dimanash, ul- t i m a t e l y t o e h m a n a t e , t h e I n d z a n p o p u l a t i o n ; it has pro- posed a m m u r e restrictzng the areas a n whach Indians m a y l i v e , thus establishang virtual ghettoes; takang away t h e right t o b u y or lease land except an n a r r o w l y l i m i t e d districts N a t a l ; a n d c r e a t i n g o t h e r 1imLtatzons o n t h e raghts of people already livzng under heavy restrictaons.]

N April 23, in a quiet and rather tense House, the Minister of the Interior, Dr. Malan, announced that,

owing to a formula which had been agreed upon between his own Government and that of India, the Asiatic bill would be postponed, pending a round-table conference to discuss the whole Asiatic problem in South Africa. The crux of t h a t formula-oh, blessed word-is the sentence which states :

Cape Town, M a y 1

0

The Government of the Union have impressed on the Government of India that public opinion in South Africa

wlll not view with favor any settlement which does not hold out a reasonable prospect of safeguarding the main- tenance of Western standards of life by just and legitimate means.

General Smuts, f o r t h e Opposition, gave the Govern- ment his rather lugubrious blessing, and the House agreed formally and unanimously to the postponement. The time and place of the conference have not yet been announced, but the oppressive bill, in any event, cannot come before Parliament until next year.

On this result of their visit the Government of India deputation, consisting of Mr. Paddison, an Englishman; two Indian members of the Council of State; and the Indian secretary of the deputation, Mr. Bajpai, have every reason to congratulate themselves. That their tact, their knowl- edge, and their unfailing courtesy under conditions cal- culated t o try that courtesy to the uttermost were important elements in bringing it about cannot be doubted. In view of the feeling in South Africa on what General Smuts called “this very great and difficult question,” the Govern- ment, in consenting to the round-table conference, has