Quotes Analysis: Silhouette by Langston Hughes

Quote 1: "They've just hung a black man in the dark of the moon."

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Response: This highlights racial prejudice. This serves to show that black people are poorly treated as hanging is a very inhumane act to do to someone and the deed is committed at night.

Quote 2: "For the world to see how Dixie protects its white womanhood."

Response: Dixie is the nickname for the Southern United States. The fact that it protects a particular race and gender of people also shows racial bias which is depicted more by the hanging of a black man in the night.

Finally an article by Zora Neale Hurston- How it Feels to Be Colored Me also highlights racism.

Quote 1: "I was not Zora of Orange County anymore, I was now a little colored girl."

Response: The phrase shows the transition that Neale undergoes after moving from her home to a school in Jacksonville. She moves from a society that accepts all races as equal to a place where racism is prevalent.

Quote 2: "Perhaps that's how the Great stuffer of bags filled them in the first place- who knows?"

Response: This statement seems to accept the fact that there is a reason why there are both black and white people. Neale does not take into account the racial discrimination and does not recognize its effects on her like her fellow Negroes. She takes into account the positive side of her living and tries her best to live a happy life.

Question: How does racism affect black people? Is it possible to live a happy life in a place with racial prejudice like Hurston tries to do given that one is seen as a lesser human being?

References

Apel, D. (2004). Imagery of lynching: Black men, white women, and the mob. Rutgers University Press.

Brown, S. A. (1996). The Collected Poems of Sterling A. Brown. Northwestern University Press.

Hurston, Z. N. (2000). How it feels to be colored me. Worlds of difference: Inequality in the aging experience, 95-97

McKay, C. (1922). The lynching. Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White