SOURCE: "Countee Cullen and the Harlem Renaissance" and "The Racial Poet," in Countee Cullen, Twayne Publishers, 1984, pp. 1-12, 13-24.

In the following excerpt, Shucard argues that Cullen naturally created race dominated poetry despite his intellectual intent to place artistry above all other concerns.

It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body….

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging, he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He...