The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain TITLE (REQUIRED)

Because of the fashionable trend among both the black and white middle classes to prioritize white art over that of black artists, Hughes argues that the Black artist faces significant difficulty in his endeavors to create worthy art. He receives little appreciation from either race—the Black middle classes aspire to be white and therefore value white art, and the majority of whites are incapable of seeing Black art as anything more than a diverting oddity. As Hughes says, "The road for the serious black artist, then, who would produce a racial art is most certainly rocky and the mountain is high," suggesting that Black artists must contend with prejudice at the same time they centralize Blackness in their work (7).