Let the blare of Negro jazz bands and the bellowing voice of Bessie Smith singing Blues penetrate the closed ears of the colored near-intellectual until they listen and perhaps understand. Let Paul Robeson singing “Water Boy,” and Rudolph Fisher writing about the streets of Harlem, and Jean Toomer holding the heart of Georgia in his hands, and Aaron Douglas drawing strange black fantasies cause the smug Negro middle class to turn from their white, respectable, ordinary books and papers to catch a glimmer of their own beauty.
According to the passage, what have been the effects of middle-class African Americans reading only “white” books and papers? Check all answers that are correct.
1. African Americans have been led to believe only white culture is respectable.
2. African American artists are all upper class.
3. African American intellectuals have failed to connect with their own heritage.
4. African Americans of all social classes have resisted their own heritage.