Analysis #7 Blacksploitation

“One of the most promising of the young Negroe poets said to me once, “I want to be a poet—not a Negroe poet,” meaning, I believe, “I want to write like a white poet”; meaning subconsciously, “I would like to be a white poet”; meaning by that “I would like to be white.” And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself. And I doubted then that, with his desire to run away spiritually from his race, this boy would ever be a great poet. But this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negroe art in America—this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negroe and as much American as possible” (Hughes, 1192).

Hughes worries about the longing of black artists to not be black, to be American, and to be taken seriously, but he worries that through this they will lose something.

“But he worries about the price paid for gaining the attention of whites. The perils facing the black artist are so many – from self-loathing to currying the favor of whites to providing a safe window on the exotic world of the racial other – that success depends on an honesty and fearlessness that are almost too much to ask.” (1191)

This reminded me of Blacksploitation roles in film, in the following clip Roscoe Lee Brown discusses the same issues faced by black actors.