Langston Hughes wouldn't have liked me

I was twenty, a junior in college, when I first learned of Langston Hughes's Racial Mountain. The essay, The Negro and the Racial Mountain (http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/299.html), is still one of my favorites, especially as a black poet. But upon the initial reading, I didn't get through the first section before I began to wonder if Langston would have even liked me. I have grown into one of those black folk who loves being black, but I was unsure whether this would have mattered much to him.

In his essay, written in 1926, Langston Hughes discusses the disdain that the black middle class had for all things non-white. He speaks of the word white and how it became a symbol of virtue in the black middle class household, and though I knew not of his reasoning preceding this statement, I knew well what followed. "[White] holds for the children beauty, morality, and money. The whisper of "I want to be white" runs silently through their minds." Yes. That was it. That was my childhood; it has become more memoir than memory (but that's a blog for another day). I found myself upset at my parents for establishing themselves before making family, because there I was black and loving beautiful, from money well-worked for but money nonetheless, and I couldn't shake the thought of Langston Hughes not liking me.

I smile as I type. To think back at such jovial thoughts incites more than a smile at my lips. I am also smiling with my eyes and down into my fingertips as they key away the contents of this blog, this blog whose importance is in establishing who I have come to be. A black woman who wouldn't dream for anything else. A beautiful black woman who wouldn't pray for anything else.

I am a blackwomanKentuckypoet who better understands this mountain to which Langston spoke of so many years ago, and I am still moved by his expressions. His love of craft, music and man is relevant to all young black artists, such as myself. We have the expression of "our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame" down pat; some may argue it comes as easy as breathing. And Langston may be quite proud of us, all of us, no matter our class or our parents' class, because, though now we may be the mountain standing in the way of ourselves, we have at least removed the urge "toward whiteness"; for it is white America now that moves, so often with such intent, toward blackness.

P.S. "We know we are beautiful. And ugly too." Now we must work on those "temples for tomorrow," building them as "strong as we know how" and without fear of asking questions if we don't.