African American Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Class

Hughes poems often rebel against the conditions many African Americans ar subjected to in American bon ton. In lay of the Landlord, Hughes depicts the slum-like conditions in which many total darknesss exist because of being denied access to the heart and somebody of upward mobility, "Landlord, shorelord, / My roof has sprung a leak. / Don't you remember I told you nearly it / Way last week? / Landlord, landlord, / These steps is broken down. / When you manage up yourself / It's a wonder you don't f every down?/?Copper's tin whistle! / Patrol bell! / Arrest. / Precinct Station. / Iron cell. / Headlines in the press: / small-arm THREATENS LANDLORD / TENANT HELD NO BAIL / JUDGE GIVES NEGRO 90 DAYS IN JAIL" (in Chapman 432-433).

Like the lack of powerful housing, African Americans also suffer from a lack of gauge education and ar disproportionately represented in the woeful justice system, as Hughes satirizes in the above poem's ending. Such injustices are often systematically reinforced in American society through institutions from the criminal justice system to educational institutions. We match Hughes question the variety and limitations against Blacks in the educational system in his poem Theme for English B. He is told to go base and write a page that comes out of him and it will be neat. However, the speaker in the poem wonders if that is true, knowing how often duster people seldom understand or appreciate Black people. In

Over a lifetime injected with racism, discrimination and prejudice notwithstanding for being true to himself and his culture, Hughes certainly took more than his f publicize share of abuse merely for being an African American. Having lived through segregation and the Jim Crow era, he surely felt the pain, anguish, anger and hatred that prejudice and discrimination foster. However, by being able to be true to his heart, his culture, and his beliefs that all human beings deserve dignity, respect and granting immunity regardless of race, he has been able to rise above such injustices. We see this roughly clearly in The Negro Speaks of Rivers.

As the speaker expresses in this poem, "I've known rivers; / I've known rivers ancient as the world and elderly than the flow of human blood in human veins. / My soul has grown deep like the rivers" (Hughes 1). Hughes is asserting here that he will endure with dignity, heart and soul in tact, disrespect being a victim of injustice, just as a river continues to flow era after era. Though a raw man when the poem was written, Hughes' maturity and pride are apparent(a) in this metaphor of an ancient river.

We see Hughes further the appendix of this theme of American freedom and unity for all in the poem Let American be America Again. However, he does not insist America is such a land in this poem. He pleads for America to evolve into such a land, since he knows as a marginalized minority the ideals of America are not extended to African Americans, "O, let my land be a land where Liberty / Is crowned with no irrational patriotic wreath, / But opportunity is real, and life is free, / Equality is in the air we breathe" (Hughes 1). Hughes is equating equality to air because air is mutually accessible and necessary to all, just like freedom, freedom that is so often d
Order your essay at Orderessay and get a 100% original and high-quality custom paper within the required time frame.