What do you understand today by “Negro culture”?
What I understand by the term “Negro culture” is so vague as to be meaningless. Indeed, I find the term “Negro” vague even in its racial connotations, for in Africa there are several non-white racial strains and one suspects that the term came into usage as a means of obliterating cultural differences between the various African peoples. In this way the ruthless disruption of highly developed cultures raised no troubling moral questions. The term, used mainly by whites, represented a “trained incapacity” to make or feel moral distinctions where black men were concerned.
As for the term “culture,” used in this connection, I know of no valid demonstration that culture is transmitted through the genes.
In Africa the blacks identify themselves by their tribal names, thus it is significant that it is only in the United States that the term “Negro” has acquired specific cultural content. Spelled with a capital “N” by most publications (one of the important early victories of my own people in their fight for self-definition), the term describes a people whose origin began with the introduction of African slaves to the American colonies in 1619, and which today represents the fusing with the original African strains of many racial blood lines—among them English, Irish, Scotch, French, Spanish and American Indian. Although the American Civil War brought an end to the importation of African peoples into the United States, this mixture of bloods has by no means ceased—not even in the South where the whites are obsessed with racial purity—so that today the anthropologists tell us that very few American Negroes are of pure African blood. It occurs to me that in the light of this, even if culture were transmitted through the blood stream we would encounter quite a problem in explaining just how the genes bearing “Negro” culture could so overpower those bearing French or English culture, which in all other ways are assumed to be superior.
But to continue, the American Negro people is North American in origin and has evolved under specifically American conditions: climatic, nutritional, historical, political and social. It takes its character from the experience of American slavery and the struggle for, and the achievement of, emancipation; from the dynamics of American race and caste discrimination, and from living in a highly industrialized and highly mobile society possessing a relatively high standard of living and an explicitly stated equalitarian concept of freedom. Its spiritual outlook is basically Protestant, its system of kinship is Western, its time and historical sense are American (United States), and its secular values are those professed, ideally at least, by all of the people of the United States.
Culturally this people represents one of the many subcultures which make up that great amalgam of European and native American cultures which is the culture of the United States. This “American Negro culture” is expressed in a body of folklore, in the musical forms of the spirituals, the blues and jazz; an idiomatic version of American speech (especially in the Southern United States); a cuisine; a body of dance forms and even a dramaturgy which is generally unrecognized as such because still tied to the more folkish Negro churches. Some Negro preachers are great showmen.
It must, however, be pointed out that due to the close links which Negro Americans have with the rest of the nation these cultural expressions are constantly influencing the larger body of American culture and are in turn influenced by them. Nor should the existence of a specifically “Negro” idiom in any way be confused with the vague, racist terms “white culture” or “black culture”; rather it is a matter of diversity within unity. One could indeed go further and say that, in this sense, there is no other “Negro” culture. Haitians, for instance, are an “American” people and predominantly dark but their culture is an expression of Haitian conditions: it reflects the influence of French culture and the fusion of Catholic and native Haitian religious outlooks. Thus, since most so-called “Negro cultures” outside Africa are necessarily amalgams, it would seem more profitable to stress the term “culture” and leave the term “Negro” out of the discussion. It is not culture which binds the peoples who are of partially African origin now scattered throughout the world, but an identity of passions. We share a hatred for the alienation forced upon us by Europeans during the process of colonization and empire and we are bound by our common suffering more than by our pigmentation. But even this identification is shared by most non-white peoples, and while it has political value of great potency, its cultural value is almost nil.
In your opinion was there before the arrival of Europeans a single Negro culture that all Negroes shared, or was it the case, as among the whites, that there had been many different cultures, such as Judeo-Christianity, Brahmanism, etc.…?
Before the arrival of Europeans there were many African cultures.
What is the role of modern industrial evolution on the spiritual crisis of the Negro people of our times? Does industrial progress (capitalist or socialist) endanger the future of a genuine Negro culture?
The role of modern industrial evolution in the spiritual crisis of those whom you refer to as “Negro” peoples seems to me to be as ambiguous as its role in the lives of peoples of any racial identity: it depends upon how much human suffering must go into the achievement of industrialization, upon who operates the industries, upon how the products and profits are shared and upon the wisdom used in imposing technology upon the institutions and traditions of each particular society. Ironically, black men with the status of slaves contributed much of the brute labor which helped get the industrial revolution under way; in this process they were exploited, their natural resources were ravaged and their institutions and their cultures were devastated, and in most instances they were denied anything like participation in the European cultures which flowered as a result of the transformation of civilization under the growth of technology. But now it is precisely technology which promises them release from the brutalizing effects of over three hundred years of racism and European domination. Men cannot unmake history, thus it is not a question of reincarnating those cultural traditions which were destroyed, but a matter of using industrialization, modern medicine, modern science generally, to work in the interest of these peoples rather than against them. Nor is the disruption of continuity with the past necessarily a totally negative phenomenon; sometimes it makes possible a modulation of a people’s way of life which allows for a more creative use of its energies. The United States is ample proof of this, and though we suffer much from the rupture of tradition, great good has come to the world through those achievements which were made possible. One thing seems clear, certain possibilities of culture are achievable only through the presence of industrial techniques.
It is not industrial progress per se which damages peoples or cultures, it is the exploitation of peoples in order to keep the machines fed with raw materials. It seems to me that the whole world is moving toward some new cultural synthesis, and partially through the discipline imposed by technology. There is, I believe, a threat when industrialism is linked to a political doctrine which has as its goal the subjugation of the world.
Is the birth of various religions in the present Negro societies progressive or regressive as far as culture is concerned?
I an unacquainted with the religious movements in the societies to which you refer. If the Mau Mau is one of these, then I must say that for all my disgust for those who provoked the natives to such obscene extremes, I feel it to be regressive indeed.
Several Negro poets from Africa explain that they write in French or English because the ancient languages are not adequate to express their feeling any longer. What do you think about this?
When it comes to the poet the vagueness of the term “Negro” becomes truly appalling, for if there is a “Negro” language I am unacquainted with it. Are these people Bantu, Sudanese, Nigerian, Watusi or what? As for the poets in question, it seems to me that in a general way they are faced by the problem confronted by the Irish, who for all their efforts to keep their language vital have had nevertheless their greatest poets expressing themselves in English, as in the case of Shaw, Yeats, Joyce and O’Casey. Perhaps the poet’s true language is that in which he dreams. At any rate, it is true that for some time now poets throughout the world have drawn freely from all the world’s tongues in order to create their vocabularies. One uses whatever one needs, to best express one’s vision of the human predicament.
Another way of approaching the matter is to view the poem as a medium of communication—to whom do these poets wish to speak? Each poet creates his own language from that which he finds around him. Thus if these poets find the language of Shakespeare or Racine inadequate to reach their own peoples, then the other choice is to re-create their original language to the point where they may express their complex emotions. This is the manner in which the poet makes his contribution to literature, and the greatest literary creation of any culture is its language. Further, language is most alive when it is capable of dealing with the realities in which it operates. In the myth, God gave man the task of naming the objects of the world, thus one of the functions of the poet is to insist upon a correspondence between words and ever-changing reality, between ideals and actualities. The domain of the unstated, the undefined is his to conquer.
In my own case, having inherited the language of Shakespeare and Melville, Mark Twain and Lincoln and no other, I try to do my part in keeping the American language alive and rich by using in my work the music and idiom of American Negro speech, and by insisting that the words of that language correspond with the reality of American life as seen by my own people. Perhaps if I were a member of a bilingual society I would approach my task differently, but my work is addressed primarily to those who have my immediate group experience, for I am not protesting, nor pleading, my humanity; I am trying to communicate, to articulate and define a group experience.
What do you think of the present level of Negro sculpture? What future do you see for it?
I know little of current work in sculpture by Africans, but that which I have seen appears to possess little of that high artistic excellence characteristic of ancient African art. American Negro sculpture is, of course, simply American sculpture done by Negroes. Some is good, some bad. I don’t see any possibility of work by these artists being created in a vacuum outside of those influences, national and international, individual and abstract, which influence any other American artist. When African sculpture is one influence it comes to them through the Cubists just as it did to most contemporary artists. That phenomenon which Malraux calls the “Imaginary Museum” draws no color line.
As for the future of African sculpture, it depends upon the future role which art will play in African societies which are now struggling into being. I doubt, however, that sculpture will ever play the same role that the so-called primitive art played, because the tribal societies which called this art into being have either been shattered or are being rapidly transformed. And if the influence of the primitive sculptures are to be seen in European art wherever one turns, so have the influences of modern Western art found their way into Africa. This process is more likely to increase rather than lessen. To the extent that art is an expression of transcendent values, the role of sculpture in these societies will depend upon the values of those societies.
What do you think of the future of “Negro music”?
I know only American Negro music, in this sense of the term. This music consists of jazz and the spirituals, but as with all things cultural in the United States these forms have been and are still being subjected to a constant process of assimilation. Thus, although it was the specific experience of Negroes which gave rise to these forms, they expressed and gave significance to feelings and sounds so characteristically American that both spirituals and jazz have been absorbed into the musical language of the culture as a whole. On the other hand, American Negro music was never created in a vacuum; it was the shaping of musical elements found in the culture—European, American Indian, the Afro-American rhythmical sense, the sound of the Negro voice—to the needs of a particular group. Today jazz is a national art form, but for me personally the source of the purist stream of this music is the Negro community, wherein the commercial motive in popular music is weaker, and where jazz remains vital because it is still linked with the Saturday night or the Sunday morning breakfast dance, which are still among the living social forms functioning within the Negro community.
Nor does this in any way contradict the fact that some of the leaders in the modern jazz movement are Negroes; we still move from the folk community to a highly conscious acquaintance with the twelve-tone composers and their methods in less time than it takes to complete a course in counterpoint, and these modern methods are quickly absorbed into the body of classical jazz. A man like Duke Ellington remains a vital and imaginative composer precisely because he has never severed his tie with the Negro dance and because his approach to the world’s musical speech is eclectic.
Nevertheless there is the danger that the rapid absorption of Negro American musical forms by the commercial interests and their rapid vulgarization and dissemination through the mass media will corrupt the Negro’s own taste, just as in Mexico the demand for modern designs in silver jewelry for export is leading to a dying away of native design. Thus I say that so much of the future depends upon the self-acceptance of the Negro composer and his integrity toward his musical tradition. Nor do I exclude the so-called serious composer; all are faced with the humanist American necessity of finding the balance between progress and continuity; between tradition and experimentation. For the jazz artist there is some insurance in continuing to play for dance audiences, for here the criticism is unspoiled by status-directed theories; Negroes simply won’t accept shoddy dance music, thus the artist has a vital criticism danced out in the ritual of the dance.
Since the spirituals are religious music it would seem that their future is assured by the revitalization of the Negro American churches as is demonstrated in the leadership which these churches are giving in the struggle for civil rights. The old songs play quite a part in this and they in turn throb with new emotion flowing from the black American’s revaluation of his experience. Negroes are no longer ashamed of their slave past but see in it sources of strength, and it is now generally recognized that the spirituals bespoke their birth as a people and asserted and defined their humanity. The desegregation struggle is only the socio-political manifestation of this process. Commercial rock-and-roll music is a brutalization of one stream of contemporary Negro church music, but I do not believe that even this obscene looting of a cultural expression can permanently damage the vital source—not for racial reasons but because for some time to come Negroes will live close to their traditional cultural patterns. Nor do I believe that as we win our struggle for full participation in American life we will abandon our group expression. Too much living and aspiration have gone into it, so that drained of its elements of defensiveness and alienation it will become even more precious to us, for we will see it ever clearer as a transcendent value. What we have counterpoised against the necessary rage for progress in American life (and which we share with other Americans) will have been proved to be at least as valuable as all our triumphs of technology. In spilling out his heart’s blood in his contest with the machine, John Henry was asserting a national value as well as a Negro value.
What do you think of the attempt of Brazilian and American Negroes to adopt “White values” in place of “Negro values”? Is this only an illusion on their part, or will it be a source of creative development?
I am unqualified to speak of Brazil, but in the United States, the values of my own people are neither “white” nor “black,” they are American. Nor can I see how they could be anything else, since we are a people who are involved in the texture of the American experience. And indeed, today the most dramatic fight for American ideals is being sparked by black Americans. Significantly, we are the only black peoples who are not fighting for separation from the “whites,” but for a fuller participation in the society which we share with “whites.” And it is of further significance that we pursue our goals precisely in terms of American Constitutionalism. If there is anything in this which points to “black values” it must lie in the circumstance that we really believe that all men are created equal and that they should be given a chance to achieve their highest potentialities, regardless of race, creed, color or past condition of servitude.
The terms in which the question is couched serve to obscure the cultural fact that the dynamism of American life is as much a part of the Negro American’s personality as it is of the white American’s. We differ from certain white Americans in that we have no reason to assume that race has a positive value, and in that we reject race thinking wherever we find it. And even this attitude is shared by millions of whites. Nor are we interested in being anything other than Negro Americans. One’s racial identity is, after all, accidental, but the United States is an international country and its conscious character makes it possible for us to abandon the mistakes of the past. The point of our struggle is to be both Negro and American and to bring about that condition in American society in which this would be possible. In brief, there is an American Negro idiom, a style and a way of life, but none of this is inseparable from the conditions of American society, nor from its general modes or culture—mass distribution, race and intra-national conflicts, the radio, television, its system of education, its politics. If general American values influence us; we in turn influence them—speech, concept of liberty, justice, economic distribution, international outlook, our current attitude toward colonialism, our national image of ourselves as a nation. And this despite the fact that nothing which black Americans have won as a people has been won without struggle. For no group within the United States achieves anything without asserting its claims against the counterclaims of other groups. Thus as Americans we have accepted this conscious and ceaseless struggle as a condition of our freedom, and we are aware that each of our victories increases the area of freedom for all Americans, regardless of color. When we finally achieve the right of full participation in American life, what we make of it will depend upon our sense of cultural values, and our creative use of freedom, not upon our racial identification. I see no reason why the heritage of world culture—which represents a continuum—should be confused with the notion of race. Japan erected a highly efficient modern technology upon a religious culture which viewed the Emperor as a god. The Germany which produced Beethoven and Hegel and Mann turned its science and technology to the monstrous task of genocide; one hopes that when what are known as the “Negro” societies are in full possession of the world’s knowledge and in control of their destinies, they will bring to an end all those savageries which for centuries have been committed in the name of race. From what we are witnessing in certain parts of the world today, however, there is no guarantee that simply being non-white offers any guarantee of this. The demands of state policy are apt to be more influential than morality. I would like to see a qualified Negro as President of the United States. But I suspect that even if this were today possible, the necessities of the office would shape his actions far more than his racial identity.
Would that we could but put the correct questions in these matters, perhaps then great worlds of human energy could be saved—especially by those of us who would be free.
—From Preuves, May 1958.