What does the author of this essay believe the young poet meant by his statement?

One of Hughes's major aims in this essay is to awaken a desire in the African-American middle class to see the value of their own racial culture. The tendency of that class during Hughes's time was to aspire to the gentility and dignity of the white middle class, and subsequently the black middle class aimed to enjoy and partake in the same art as that of the white middle class, ignoring the worthy qualities of their own race and instead trying to conform to that of the whites. Hughes writes that the African-American lower class has the correct perspective; instead of trying to conform to white culture, members of the lower class wholeheartedly embrace their distinctiveness.