“I am not a Negro. I am not a white man. I am a man.” — Jean Toomer | V2Melody

“I am not a Negro. I am not a white man. I am a man.”

Rejecting racial categories in favour of a wider human identity · Letter / personal statement, as commonly attributed

About Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer

26 December 1894–30 March 1967

On December 26, 1894, in Washington, D.C., Nathan Pinchback Toomer was born into a world of racial complexity that would profoundly shape his literary vision and personal identity. Known to history as Jean Toomer, this enigmatic figure would produce one of the most celebrated works of the Harlem Renaissance before…

More by Jean Toomer

Poems by Jean Toomer

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More remarks by Jean Toomer

“Talk about it only enough to do it. Dream about it only enough to feel it. Think about it only enough to understand it. Contemplate it only enough to be it.”

Advocating action and embodiment over mere contemplation · Aphorisms / writings

“I am of no particular race. I am of the human race, a man at large in the human world, preparing a new race.”

Rejecting fixed racial categories for a broader human identity · Essentials (1931)

“There is no such thing as happiness. Life bends joy and pain, beauty and ugliness, in such a way that no one may isolate them.”

On the inseparability of contrasting elements in experience · Writings / aphorisms