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If you go back and read
Langston Hughes's essay from 1929,

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I think it was,
"The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain."

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He opens it with a question from a young poet who approaches him and says,

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"I don't wanna be a black poet, I just wanna be a poet."

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But what does that mean, really?

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In his essay, he says,

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what that artist is really saying is,
"I wanna be a white artist."

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Because they are not burdened by the problem of race.

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To not be called a Black artist
seems to perform some kind of

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liberating function in the minds of a lot of people.

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So who needs to not know,

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or who needs to not think of you as a Black artist

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in order for you to become a real artist?

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The painting is the painting.

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Black painters have done all kinds of work all the time.

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So it's not a question of whether they represent or whether they don't represent.

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But it's the treatment of
whichever of those forms they engage in.

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That's what determines the value of the work.

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Not whether you call them a Black artist or not.