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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - X. The Negro Community - 44. Non-Institutional Aspects of the Negro Community - 5. Negro Achievements
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994 An American Dilemma
many negative factors to be considered in judging relative excellence:
Negroes can seldom get the training usually considered necessary to highest
achievement in the arts 5
their segregated schools are usually inadequate j
they are restricted in their contacts and, much more than whites, lack the
atmosphere congenial to creative work 5
they are seldom allowed to get far
from the race problem; many white critics have a double standard—more
indulgent to Negroes—^when comparing the products of Negro and white
artists; there are still some restrictions against Negro artists, especially in
the South.
Whatever the reason for the success of Negroes in the fields of entertain-
ment and the arts, the success has had predominantly beneficial effects for
the Negroes. It has enabled them to get a measure of self-confidence, even
though it may have had the secondary effect of stimulating a false pride
in race. It has made the whites more friendly, and sometimes it has made
them have a measure of respect for Negroes.® It has opened a significant
number of excellent economic opportunities for Negroes, and is thus the
economic basis for a sizable portion of the Negro upper and middle class.
Interest in the arts may have improved the taste and poise of Negroes; but
interest in entertainment may have degraded their tastes. In a number of
ways, never analyzed by students of Negro social life, entertainment and the
arts have had a pervasive influence on practically all Negroes.
When white support of Negro literature and art was partially with-
drawn after 1929, Negroes tended to react away from doing the things
whites wanted them to do. Paul Robeson, for example, declared:
I believe where the Afro-American made his mistake was when he began trying to
mimic the West instead of developing the really great tendencies he inherited from
the East. I believe the Negro can achieve his former greatness only if he learns to
follow his natural tendencies, and ceases trying to master the greatness of the West.
My own instincts are Asiatic.®®
This is only petulance, of course, but many Negro writers and artists have
come to believe that they can develop an art quite distinct from the white
American’s art and from what the white American is willing to pay for.
But, as George S. Schuyler wrote in 1926, “Negro art there has been, is,
and will be among the numerous black natives of Africa; but to suggest
the possibility of any such development among the ten million colored peo-
ple in this republic is self-evident foolishness.”®*^ Negro art will continue
to be American because its creators are American and American influences
continually mold it. Whether Negro artists will turn out products which
differ from those of white artists will depend on those individual artists,
and on the audiences willing to pay for the art.
* See Chapter 30, Section 3.
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