There's Never Been Equality For Me

“Let America Be America Again” becomes personal for the audience which is what makes this poem so easily appreciated and enjoyed. The poem refers to the many races and backgrounds by referring to, “the poor white, fooled and pushed apart” or “the Negro bearing slavery’s scars” (Line 19 and 20). Whether the reader is poor, rich, white, black, or Indian the poem goes in detail of how for better or worse everyone makes up America. With Langston Hughes being African American, he obviously witnessed and endured racism and hardships, but he broadened the discussion by not only mentioning the Negros, but of the poor whites and the “red man” to make

Before even coming to America, he would always hear stories about how racist and discriminant the educational system was which worried him; he knew that leaving his country and moving out here on his own was a big risk. Even though schools were desegregated, it was still completely split between White people and Colored people. Although he did not remember the name, he discussed the Brown v. Board of Education case and how that was very important to him because even though he was not Black, he still faced a few of the same struggles. As a Brown man, he experienced a lot of racism; from racial slurs being yelled at him to actually getting jumped on his way home. Although he struggled to fit in, he was able to form really solid friendships with people; especially through the love of rock and roll and

I, too and Dreams are both poems that cover an issue that was happening for a very long time in America. The issue that African Americans and other minorities should conform to society’s unfair box that they have put African Americans in terms of what they could do and be with their lives, or they should not conform because they know that it is wrong. This way of conformity began with the slaves. The slave owners, who were white, were perceived to be better than the slaves, who were black. Slave owners were richer, and perceived to be smarter than the “unruly beasts” that were African slaves. This belief changed and evolved like any other belief. In more recent decades, after the Civil War, African Americans and other minorities were thought to be second class citizens compared to white people. African Americans could not do or be certain things, like famous singers, because it would be

To support this reason, discovered on page 11, it declares that “I have seen that dream all my life. It is perfect houses with nice lawns. It is Memorial Day cookouts, block associations, and driveways. The Dream is treehouses and the Cub Scouts. The Dream smells like peppermint but tastes like strawberry shortcake. And for so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket.” In other words, the Dream is a place where everything ‘perfect’, or having all of beneficial elements to live a refined life, without having to worry about brutality and discriminatory in your neighborhood. The “Dream” is having tranquil and elegance in a community, but only for one type of racial group,

The American Dream can be defined as an ideal that every American citizen has equal opportunity in achieving success and prosperity. In Martin Luther king Junior’s I Have a Dream speech, Sherman Alexie’s “Hymn”, and Langston Hughes’ poem “Let America be America Again”, all authors talk about how America does not provide the dream that it promised. The I Have a Dream speech was presented in 1963 by Martin Luther King Jr. He was an African American who was a civil rights activist and wrote the speech in hopes to stop discrimination. “Hymn”, by Sherman Alexie, is a poem about how many events provoked protests and divided the country. He was a writer, poet, journalist, and essayist. Let “America be America Again” was written by Langston Hughes in 1936. Hughes was an American writer and social activist.

America has a vision of a dream that is a thank you to the “unworried boys, to pie and pot roast, to the white fences, green lawns, nightly beamed into our television set” (Coates 29). As for Coates, the dream means a realization between the differences of the races. The dream in America is impossible to live with, the dream is actually an illusion from our country’s history. Negatively the dream is rejected to Coates, because the dream lies to our minds and eyes. Illusion of the dream “thrives on generalization, on limiting the number of possible questions, on privileging immediate answers” ( Coates 50). The only ones who are allowed to access the dream are the ones who don’t struggle to get there and connecting to my previous thoughts that equality was a reality to some and for many a concept beyond their

– Let America be America again). The poems display images of hardship and frustration. They both speak of a difference within races and also what the life in America is different from the eyes of someone who isn’t white.

The poem “Let America Be America Again,” by Langston Hughes, brings up two sides to the discussion about what America means to people. It discusses the fact that to some people, America is an amazing land, where people are free from oppression and have rights. The poem, however, does not neglect the fact that there are people who have never experienced those freedoms and rights, nor does it neglect the fact that the people who have not experienced those rights also live in America. The issue about people living in America but never experiencing rights that are thought to be American was very prominent at the time that Hughes wrote the poem. Now the discussion is not “what it means to live in America” but “what it means to love America.” The issue contemplates whether someone can love America and still notice its flaws; or, if in order to love America one must neglect its ugly truths and only focus on the great accomplishments. One of the main causes for this discussion derive from the fact that right-winged people claim that Obama does not love America. However, they fail to see that in order to love something you must also notice its flaws and fix them.

He said “ let my land be a land where liberty is covered with no false patriotic wreath. ” In this qoute hes saying that the land of america or any other land should be everyone 's land. Everyone should have the same privilege, equality is one bing role of being an american. He also talk about how people don 't really care about being patriotic, meaning people don 't care about the culture of america or not respecting the nationality of their land. I agree with Langston Hughes because everyone wants liberty,freedom but they are just “Americans” because they live here and pretending they care for the nationally of America. The idea of being patriotic to your country means a lot to many people because it means that you actually care for your country. As Susan Noyes said in her poem “Patriot Dreams” , she said “ flags were flown and pledges spoken .” Susan is saying that people were proud of their country and would actually care to sing the national anthem back then. Now and days many people don’t even know the song or what it means to be a TRUE AMERICAN. Teenagers these days don’t even get up to do the pledge of allegiance because they don 't know the meaning of it or why do they need to that. When it comes to the topic of patriotic, most of us will readily agree that is has not been the same as years go by. Where this agreement ends,however,is on the question of the americans.whereas some are convinced that

The United States was a melting pot of all different races at this time, due to this idea of the American dream. For the African Americans, the American dream was way better than anything they experienced for the past 100 years, because they were no longer slaves. Having the opportunities to work, make money, and live in their own homes, they were very happy. But, their lives were still not perfect. On one of the online documents, the author is an ex slave who is going to the north to escape the discrimination of the south, he says, “I pick up my life and take it with me and i put it down in Chicago… Any place that is North and West and not South” (DBQ D). After The Emancipation Proclamation people, mostly in the south, still treated the slaves as if they were aliens. The goal for the person in this poem was to move

According to Jean Wagner in Black Poets of the United States, the dream that Hughes writes of represents the democratic ideal of liberty and equality; the history of the dream is actually the history of the founding and building of America. The dream of black people has always been closely blended with the American dream, which is not yet a reality for all (Anstendig & Hicks 239).

The poem America by Claude McKay is on its surface a poem combining what America should be and what this country stands for, with what it actually is, and the attitude it projects amongst the people. Mckay uses the form of poetry to express how he, as a Jamaican immigrant, feels about America. He characterizes the bittersweet relationship between striving for the American dream, and being denied that dream due to racism. While the America we are meant to see is a beautiful land of opportunity, McKay see’s as an ugly, flawed, system that crushes the hopes and dreams of the African-American people.

Written in the first half of the 20th century, “Let America Be America” is a poem that documents and responds to the oppressed state of the United States, in both the past and present. The poem is a plea for a return to the original principles of freedom that our country has seemingly forgotten. Additionally, the speaker sees America as the broken home to oppressed people who have lost sight of the ultimate goal of freedom and happiness. Although America is often perceived as the “land of the free,” Langston Hughes’s poem contradicts this ideology by not only painting a vivid picture of oppression in America but also by providing a desperate hope for the future.

In Langston Hughes poem “Let America be America Again” he talks about how America should return to the way that it was perceived to be in the dreams before America was truly America. Throughout the poem he uses various methods to evoke the patriotic images and dreams that he feels America should and will eventually be. Hughes states that America is supposed to be a place of equality for everyone including both white and colored people. During this period in time though there was not equality for everyone. Hughes talks about an America where both whites and colored people will have equality in all aspects socially, politically, and economically. What Hughes is saying is that both whites and colored