He rejected out of hand that "Negro themes" or "'Congo, North American Indian, Creole, Greaser and Cowboy ditties, whinings, yawps and whoopings" could be construed as emblematically American.
It was originally to have been a fantasy on what were then called Negro themes, and Coleridge-Taylor actually completed such a work, only to withdraw and destroy it immediately.
Locke dismisses nearly out of hand the first option remarking that many a Negro artist has produced the most amateurish works of art due primarily to their poor mastery of Negro idioms, and inadequate treatment of Negro themes.
Central to his writing was also the large figure of Ralph Ellison, in whose work he found the grandest combination of universal themes given Negro American particulars.
The prevalence of ritual in American Negro life became the dominant theme of Bearden's mature work.
He returned again and again to his main theme, "the deterioration of the Negro family," which he considered "the fundamental source of the weakness of the Negro community"; he included a chart showing the rising proportion of nonwhite births in America that were "illegitimate".
Peck divides I Am Not Your Negro up into chapters, each drawing on a specific theme or aspect of Baldwin's worldview.
The painting had fervent admirers too, including French writer and art critic Auguste Jal who praised its political theme, its liberal position (the advancement of the "negro", the critique of ultra-royalism), and its modernity.
He attended the sort of conservative, all-white high school that could — and did, in his senior year — hold a Harlem-themed prom, complete with "decorations in the form of Negro heads".
One textbook theme excerpted by DuBois stated that "legislatures were often at the mercy of Negroes, childishly ignorant, who sold their votes openly, and whose 'loyalty' was gained by allowing them to eat, drink and clothe themselves at the state's expense".
