Black heritage and American culture This interest in black heritage coincided with efforts to define an American culture distinct from that of Europe, one that would be characterized by ethnic pluralism as well as a democratic ethos. The concept of cultural pluralism (a term coined by the philosopher Horace Kallen in 1915) inspired notions of the United States as a new kind of nation in which diverse cultures should develop side by side in harmony rather than be “melted” together or ranked on a scale of evolving “civilization.” W.E.B. Du Bois had advocated something like this position in his The Souls of Black Folk (1903), a defining text of the New Negro movement because of its profound effect on an entire generation that formed the core of the Harlem Renaissance. As various forms of cultural-pluralist thought took hold, a fertile environment for the blossoming of African American arts developed. Moreover, the effort on the part of some American intellectuals to distinguish American literature and culture from European cultural forms dovetailed with African American intellectuals’ beliefs about their relationship to American national identity.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 16:37:32 +0000
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