In the excerpt from "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," in which sentence does Hughes indicate that musicians and writer
s should work without any concern about judgment? An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose. But, to my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, 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!” So I am ashamed for the black poet who says, “I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet,” as though his own racial world were not as interesting as any other world. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.
