It is the duty of the younger Negro artist… to change through the force of his art that old whispering “I want to be white,” hidden in the aspirations of his people, to “Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro—and beautiful!”

Langston Hughes wrote this in the mid-1920s amid the Harlem Renaissance, when a new generation of Black writers, musicians, and visual artists were debating how African American art should relate to white patronage and white critical standards. Hughes argued against assimilationist pressures and against making “respectable” art designed to win white approval. In his manifesto-like essay, he urges younger Black artists to embrace Black life as their subject and to cultivate racial pride, transforming internalized desires for whiteness into affirmation of Black beauty and identity. The passage reflects Hughes’s broader commitment to vernacular culture (jazz, blues, everyday speech) as a foundation for modern Black art.

The quote frames art as a moral and cultural responsibility: the “younger Negro artist” must use creative power to counter internalized racism within the Black community. Hughes identifies a “whispering” aspiration—wanting to be white—as a hidden but corrosive legacy of oppression. By insisting on “I am a Negro—and beautiful,” he recasts Blackness from a condition to escape into a source of aesthetic and spiritual value. The line also stakes out an artistic program: authentic Black art should not imitate white norms but should help remake collective self-understanding, turning self-denial into self-recognition and pride.