Larry Neal's Essay 'Black Aesthetic'
ENGL 364
After reading all the required readings, I truly feel like all of these essays and stories all have a very common thread. While they have some differences, slight nuances as it compares to the audience or the level of scholar of the writer, they all addressed the same thing, the need for African American artist to be proud of their achievements and accomplishments. They all addressed the need for what Larry Neal describes as the “Black aesthetic”. Neal includes that the motive behind the Black Aesthetic is the destruction of the white thing, the destruction of white ideas, and white ways of looking at the world. The new aesthetic is mostly predicated on an Ethics which asks the question: whose vision of the world is finally …show more content…
How can this happen if African American culture and history is not embraced? The art work and written word has a meaning and story just like any other that produces this talent. A lot has changed over time, but as African Americans Strive to climb to the top there are stereotypes when examining work from African Americans. Why are African Americans held to a higher standard but seen as lower? When will all accomplishments be equal and seen as …show more content…
When a black artist is mentioned artistically, the visual is of a happy-go-lucky, singing, shuffling, banjo-picking being or as a more or less pathetic figure. The picture of him is in a log cabin amid fields of cotton or along the levees. Negro dialect is naturally and by long association the exact instrument for voicing this phase of Negro life; and by that very exactness it is an instrument with but two full stops, humor and pathos. So even when he confines himself to purely racial themes, the Aframerican poet realizes that there are phases of Negro life in the United States which cannot be treated in the dialect either adequately or artistically
After reading all the required readings, I truly feel like all of these essays and stories all have a very common thread. While they have some differences, slight nuances as it compares to the audience or the level of scholar of the writer, they all addressed the same thing, the need for African American artist to be proud of their achievements and accomplishments. They all addressed the need for what Larry Neal describes as the “Black aesthetic”. Neal includes that the motive behind the Black Aesthetic is the destruction of the white thing, the destruction of white ideas, and white ways of looking at the world. The new aesthetic is mostly predicated on an Ethics which asks the question: whose vision of the world is finally …show more content…
How can this happen if African American culture and history is not embraced? The art work and written word has a meaning and story just like any other that produces this talent. A lot has changed over time, but as African Americans Strive to climb to the top there are stereotypes when examining work from African Americans. Why are African Americans held to a higher standard but seen as lower? When will all accomplishments be equal and seen as …show more content…
When a black artist is mentioned artistically, the visual is of a happy-go-lucky, singing, shuffling, banjo-picking being or as a more or less pathetic figure. The picture of him is in a log cabin amid fields of cotton or along the levees. Negro dialect is naturally and by long association the exact instrument for voicing this phase of Negro life; and by that very exactness it is an instrument with but two full stops, humor and pathos. So even when he confines himself to purely racial themes, the Aframerican poet realizes that there are phases of Negro life in the United States which cannot be treated in the dialect either adequately or artistically