I have personally experienced this. I have performed poetry readings at various libraries with varied audiences and have noticed marked differences in the way black and white audiences appreciate black artists. After a reading with a mostly white audience, during the book signing, I nearly sold out of books. The people where very excited, and they made me feel that my poems meant something to them by opening their pocketbooks and spending. It made me feel special. Then I read in a primarily black library. After the reading, I got pats on the back and high praises like "you're going to make it big someday", "Good luck", and I would maybe get one or two sales. I would not have been so disappointed if the reading was before a poor black audience who had little interaction with the arts, but this was the black middle class: corporate climbers, newscasters, and educators. As always, once 'white approval' of the new black artist is achieved, he is featured in m agazines, radio programs and newspaper articles. Sold out readings can make a book a best seller. One can see why white audiences are so appealing. Only after this chain of events has taken place do black artists become the pride of the black community. I have never understood this?

This is a mountain to overcome. Traditionally, black Americans are not in the habit of opening pocketbooks and wallets and doing what is necessary to make their own celebrities. From the example of my opening statements, if a black writer wants to be appreciated for his work he often targets white audiences. Strangely enough, the goal of these artists is not to reach the white audiences; many strive first to reach the black community with their works but received vague receptions. It's as if the black audiences are afraid to support its own. Unless the artist is an established performer approved by the lager white audiences, the attitude of the black audience is, "Who are you?" Malcolm X described it as the House Niger, Field Niger syndrome. The separation of black people into classes, 'The Haves' and the 'Have Not', created an atmosphere of distrust, unhealthy competition and envy within the race. 'The Have's' are always afraid that a 'Have Not' or Field Niger will surpass them in matters of wealth, power and position.

This is a mountain to overcome. Dual consciousness is a term W. E. B. DuBois coined in the late 19th century to explain the love/ hate relationship that blacks have with white culture and the duplicity that exist within the Black American psychic. The question of dual consciousness is still a unique trait that African-Americans exhibits, and the idea of seeking 'white approval' continues to run deep in black culture. Langston Hughes talked about this in "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" an essay he wrote in 1926, yet after three-quarters of a century, the elements of his essay are still profound and relevant to this 21st century. It describes those who endeavored to take on stagnation of assimilation, the overwhelming influence on the minds of black artist of the day to do all things white. To create 'White', think white, and if possible, be white. White culture was the standard of the day in 1926. This assimilation of white culture was expected from the upper middle class blacks of the early 20th century that wanted to distant themselves from their slave heritage. The black bourgeois saw themselves as the example of the evolving black culture as they mimicked the larger culture around them.

Through this denial of their own culture, the literary works of many 19th and early 20th century writers were void of originally and in my summation, stagnate. But there arose black writers that sought to express themselves in their own unique voices, following the lead of Paul Lawrence Dunbar. The Harlem Renaissance movement began and created the platform for these new voices to be heard. Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston and others were those who wished to speak vernacular of the everyday black worker or the dialect of poor black southerners and dared to praise black culture. Because of their bold and honest portrayal of what they've observed and the life they've lived, the upper class blacks quickly criticized these fresh voices.

Today, the black bourgeois does not criticize us artists and writers. On the contrary, they have now become the super Afrocentic with head wraps, dread locks and kente' cloth dashikis. Though this group supports the black arts and is proud of its contributions, it is usually the artist accepted by the larger audiences they support. Emerging artists are not in the arena of their notice. In response, many black writers are becoming more self-critical and self-conscience of their own ethnic experiences that imprint naturally on their work. In seeking to find a larger literary audience, these black writers' gear their works away from African-American themes to keep their works from being labeled ethnic and to bring them into what they believe to be a universal whole. Art, any art, when it is good transcends national, racial and theological differences. Langston Hughes once said in a speech in 1960, "In the great sense of the word, anytime, any place, good art transcends land, race, or nationality, and color drops away. If you are a good writer, in the end neither blackness nor whiteness makes a difference…"

Why do these black writers avoid black culture as part of universality? I don't know. From conversations with these writers, I have noticed that their understanding of universal literature most often possesses an absence of any theme that alludes to ethnicity or culture. I once went to a meeting of the International black writers in Charlotte and talked to one of the members that was excited about her new novel. She was particularly keen to make it known to me that her new book was more universal than her last. I asked her how? What was different about this book? She told me that this book has no racial tags and that the characters can be of any racial group or culture. When she told me that my heart sank. I wanted to tell her that Tony Morrison and E Lynn Harris both write about black culture using black characters and using universal themes that all people can connect with. Imagine Shakespeare writing Othello without ever mentioning that Othello was a black Moor, or the Song of Songs when Solomon praised the beauty of the Queen of Ethiopia by saying, "I am black, yet lovely" (Song of Songs 1:5). Good literature is able to connect with what is universal in human nature regardless of the cultural or racial elements found in the literature. The story, the emotions, and the life drama are the true elements that connect the reader with the characters and the author's vision. I see no reason to write a culture-less book with ambiguous characters. Stagnation of assimilation is alive and well. This is a mountain to overcome.

After centuries of seeking who we are as Africans in America, we are now learning to embrace our artist and ourselves. At this junction with the 21st century, black culture is larger and more sophisticated in its art and literature. While it is still true that a large number of black minds continue to seek white approval to legitimize our artists, there is a growing black audience that is seeking to create its own celebrities. Using the tools of media, word of mouth, and most of all opening their pocketbooks and spending on the artist, this emerging black audience has created celebrity status for such authors as E. Lynn Harris, Terry McMillian and others. Black readers had already embraced them before the white world ever heard of them. As for the emerging poets, little have been said.

This new black arts movement has focused on novelist, but black poets like Kwame Alexander, Kwasi Ramsey, Das Bruce, and myself have been smaller recipients of the love and commitment coming forth from this new black audience. The poetry audience does not seem as mature as the novelist audience does. This audience highly supports Poetry Slams, nightclubs and out of doors in the park readings so long as there's hip-hop music to be heard and alcohol to be bought. These poetry outlets are mainly the venues of college students who think they have reached a certain level of cultural understanding. I call this instant gratification and pseudo intellectualism. They hail the poets with the funkiest rhyme and with mouths opened wide signifying nothing. They listen attentively without thinking about what they're hearing. Poetry does raise the conscienceness, but one must be still, ready and attentive to receive it.

I have no problem with these college venues, I myself have read in enough night clubs over the years, but the quality of work unfortunately for many of these night life poets (not all) is not on the level of a serious artist of words. I am waiting for the day when these poets that quote from their diaries and reveal intimate secrets in their bedrooms are replaced with work that is truly poetry. We need a mature audience that is willing to make monetary support in the form of book sales. We need an audience to do word-of-mouth and support poets. If you think someone else will benefit from your book discovery, tell him or her. We need a poetry audience that reads and wants others to do the same.

This is the mountain we must over come, the failure to see the shortcomings of ourselves. Though it has been one hundred and thirty-five-year sense emancipation, it has only been thirty years sense Civil Rights reforms and protected citizenship in this country. We are still carrying a lot of old 19th and 20-century thinking. We must continue to grow as individuals as we press on toward the goal of self-determination. We as artist must not see the shortcomings of our growth as a mountain standing against the backdrop of our hopes and dreams, nor an obstacle to block our progress, but rather as a challenge for those who aspire to greatness and seek to do great things. One must be willing to take on the difficulties of the seemingly impossible and press on though weak, and to be strong in faith and to persevere until the end. There is no reward without struggle.

"We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves" -- Langston Hughes