Definition of "negritude" [negritude]

• An aesthetic and ideological concept affirming the independent nature, quality, and validity of Black culture. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Concepts such as the African personality, Pan-Africanism, and what is now called negritude owed their early development to the stimulus of Edward Wilmot Blyden."
• "Even within what we could call "negritude" there are other interesting approaches - consider the numerous but rigid color classifications that (I believe) obtain in many Caribbean cultures (though I only personally and not-exhaustively know the French islands), with the very odd and small white planter class functioning as an almost unseen Platonic ideal of paleness - with the metropolitans being largely irrelevant."
• "As poet and philosopher, Mr. Senghor developed the concept of "negritude," his term for the common cultural and spiritual heritage of Africa's people."