“As heretical as it may sound, there is the probability that Negro poets, dependent as they are on the English language, may have more to gain from the rich background of English and American poetry than from any nebulous atavistic yearnings toward an African inheritance.”

Prefers the inherited English lyric tradition over a reconstructed African poetic past · Foreword, Caroling Dusk, 1927

• Language
• Poetry
• Tradition

“Whether they relish the situation or not, Negroes should be concerned with making good impressions. They cannot do this by throwing wide every door of the racial entourage, to the wholesale gaze of the world at large. Decency demands that some things be kept secret; diplomacy demands it.”

Argues for privacy and tact as part of racial self-presentation in art · The Dark Tower column, Opportunity

• Dignity
• Privacy
• Race

“Let art portray things as they are, no matter what the consequences, no matter who is hurt, is a blind bit of philosophy.”

Rejects unfiltered realism when it only arms hostility or cheapens the subject · The Dark Tower column, Opportunity

• Art
• Restraint
• Truth