Intra-racial artistic battles over assimilationism could read as betrayal

Evidence

If Langston Hughes focused his antiracist creative energy on persuading Black people away from assimilationist ideas, and if Countee Cullen focused his assimilationist creative energy on persuading White people away from segregationist ideas, then Du Bois remained doubly focused on both. But in 1926, Du Bois’s attention veered much more into persuading White people. And so Du Bois viewed Hughes’s essay, and then his endorsement of Carl Van Vechten’s Nigger Heaven, released in August 1926, as utterly traitorous. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 842

Categorization

• XREF: A clean three-way map of the era’s positions: Hughes antiracist (persuading Blacks), Cullen assimilationist (persuading Whites), Du Bois doubly focused — directly usable for placing any argument into Kendi’s scheme.