The Negro Takes His Place in American Art

Locke, Alain. "The Negro Takes His Place in American Art." The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David L. Lewis. New York: Viking Penguin, 1994. 134-37. Print.

Apparently, according to this pompous writer, being black and an artist necessitates being an artist that deals with black themes. Obviously, because color is so ultimate and important to the lives of everyone in the world, one must always adhere to the clichéd norm demanded by their race. The young black artist Locke mentions who wanted to be known as an artist rather than a black artist was completely in the wrong – no one should ever be expected to break the repetitious mold of the obvious. My God, what if that young man had actually gone on to produce works of art indistinguishable from white, red, and yellow artists? It would be detrimental to the cause of black artists all over the world! Thank Christ, though, that Locke was sympathetic enough to suggest that the young man’s views were (perhaps!) pardonable, for if he hadn’t allowed such a horrible deviance, surely the entirety of black culture would have been ruined.

I am, of course, being sarcastic. Obviously, Alain Locke is an obnoxious egotist who cannot see outside of his own very narrow realm of art. He is the kind of moron who, because he has been so privileged and so elevated within his field by the public, believes himself to be the end-all to artistic merit. He is an idiot, and exactly the kind of man who would have promoted the racial divide rather than blend whites and blacks. Thank God there are people like the young man he referenced that are willing to get over themselves.