Page:The Negro-Art Hokum.pdf/2

June 16, 1926] 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 of 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 of 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 treasury 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.

[An opposing view on the subject of Negro art will be presented by LanstonLangston [sic] Hughes in next week’s issue.]

London, May 19

HAVE already recorded in your pages the fact that at one o’clock on the morning of May 8 the Baldwin Cabinet broke off negotiations—at a most promising stage—with the Trade Union Council. The occasion was a trumpery and entirely unofficial incident in the office of the Daily Mail which the council was given neither opportunity to repudiate nor time to investigate. That day was passed in a conciliatory debate in the House of Commons where everyone made gestures of peace without any attempt being made to abandon points of punctilio and get back to the real problem of the mines. The strike, accordingly, began at midnight on May 3, and continued until the morning of May 12, when it was called off unconditionally in at least a formal sense.

It was astonishingly complete and orderly. The men everywhere responded with magnificent loyalty to the call of their leaders. In general, over 90 per cent of those asked to stop work did so. Not the least difficult task of the council was to keep at work the literally hundreds of thousands who were insistent in their desire actively to stand with their fellows. I saw unceasing deputations of men who had not been called out, who came to headquarters in passionate protest at the order to remain in. As an example of working-class solidarity there has been, on this side, no finer demonstration in English trade-union history.

It was an orderly strike. Every observer, British and foreign, has borne testimony to the peaceful conditions everywhere prevailing. The strikers were told by their leaders to be law abiding whatever the provocation. I doubt whether the total number of arrests, throughout Great Britain and on every charge, passed the five hundred mark. It was conducted with a sober earnestness which makes one realize the fine reserve of moral strength there is in the workingman. Incidents like the football-match between strikers and police in Plymouth (which the strikers won) are fairly typical of the temper which prevailed. A foreign correspondent who described the incident which did occur as “an extended boat-race night” was not, I think, exaggerating the character of the atmosphere.

It was a complete strike. Train services, outside milk-trains, practically ceased the country over; so did the buses and trams in all but a few cases. The volunteer services arranged by the authorities could not cope with a fraction of the need. The owners of private cars in general remained owners of private cars; even the exceptions left one (in London) with the impression that most owners had little desire to help the average pedestrian. In a walk, for instance, from Kensington to Whitehall (a distance of some three miles) I tried to get a lift vainly from over seventy cars which passed by either empty, or half-empty, of passengers. Outside the two official newspapers, the British Gazette from the Government side and the British Worker on the trade-union side, our press consisted either of multigraphed sheets of single-leaf broadsides, of four pages, almost void of foreign news, from the Times and the Paris Daily Mail, which came over by air. One or two provin-