At the turn of the nineteenth century, Black artists, collectors, and art critics were taught that white western aesthetics, themes, materials, and artworks were the best humans could produce. Thus, as we have seen, many artists and intellectuals shunned or avoided connecting their work with Black Africa. There also existed Black artists, collectors, and critics who embraced Black African visual culture in problematic ways. During and after emerging from the Harlem Renaissance, Black artists incorporated Black African design and colours into their work. Several Black artists also appropriate Egyptian design. The use of Black African objects as subjects of artworks was not revolutionary or new in the art world. Further, these Black Harlem Renaissance artists are not entirely rejecting white western art, as white European artists already worked with Black African design in the latter 1800s. The Black artists’ turn towards Black African objects and designs demonstrates how they were searching for idyllic Black African cultures in the quest for a history that did not start with the horrors of the triangular trade of Black African people.

The artists and scholars of the Harlem Renaissance faced an impossible task as the information about Black Africa was inaccurate at best and often purposefully misleading, painting a picture of lost civilisations crumbled into cannibalistic devil-worshipping cults. There is a disconnect between appreciating Black African objects, which collectors regarded as quasireligious relics or plastic art and understanding Black African people as ignorant savages. The artists associated with the Harlem Renaissance, who claimed Black African objects as their inspiration, had complex and sometimes racist views towards Black Africans and dark-skinned Blacks in the US. Their understanding of Black Africa and its arts was based only on white supremacist aesthetics, mythology, and bad histories.

The white supremacists in the west hold power and control knowledge. In the US after the Civil War, white supremacists were eager to find new ways to control the Black population, so a great deal of education presented white western civilisation as the apex of all humankind and Black African people as the far opposite end of civilisation, i.e., animals. It should not be surprising that Black US artists, critics and collectors who had no memory of enslavement nor knew their familial history beyond their closest relatives would believe what white colonialists said about Black African people and objects.