... Poor Catholic poor-white crazy woman, said the black folks' mouths" (8). But throughout the novel, it is factual treatment of race that dominates any emotional construction of race.

The central problem of identity in Cane is grounded in lack of acceptance of what has universally existed i.e. polarities. In the 1920s, writers like Toomer embraced a new kind of racial identity i.e. repudiation of race itself that emerged from accepting that world has always harbored differences and divergent viewpoints and thus different racial identities was also a norm and not something to be seen as a source of conflict.

Toomer sets the particular problem in the black world, but he sees it as the true artist does, whatever his race. The problem is the eternal one man must confront: the mind is the source of insight and of any art in life, but the mind also destroys the blood...
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