It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think America concedes that true American music has sprung from the Negro.
You've got to appreciate the things that come from the art of the Negro and from the heart of the man farthest down.
I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.
Michael Jackson fundamentally altered the terms of the debate about African American music. Remember, he was a chocolate, cherubic-faced genius with an African American halo. He had an Afro halo. He was a kid who was capable of embodying all of the high possibilities and the deep griefs that besieged the African American psyche.
Yes, the audience is so important to Negro music, especially the element of call and response.
It demonstrates to his simple mind in the most positive manner that we have no prejudice against him on account of his race, and that while he behaves himself he will be treated the same as a white man.
The thought of' the inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies.
And no book gives a deeper insight into the inner life of the Negro, his struggles and his aspirations, than, The Souls of Black Folk.
The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities - he is only reacting to 400 years of the conscious racism of the American whites.
The black artist's role in America is to aid in the destruction of America as he knows it.