Harlem Renaissance - Assignment Example

This re-birth of the cultural, social, education and civic norms, changed society as a whole. This era in which the great depression was going on and millions of people were jobless, put a new life in the black people of America (Carry, 1998). This era had produced many great scholars, poets, and authors. Out of which, the poems of two such poets and the concept of double consciousness developed in their work () are discussed here. The poem discussed first is Langston Hughes’s “Let America be America Once Again”.

It is an emotional piece of culture in which the poet credits America being the land of free, brave and harmonious people. The society which sets its foundation on educational institutes and industrialization, the country which was the land of dreams for many black people around the world and especially in America, who fought for America, died for it and relied on it. The poet terms America as the land of free where there is no freedom, no matter how much sacrifices you have made. There is strong disgust about the inequality, coercion, poverty, and injustice through which every black person had to go through.

This poem depicts the mentality of white superiority over black and red people. Both of whom had given blood in the foundation of this very country. Langston also saddened by the fact that the black people being humiliated on the base of their culture, they were called barbarians because of their civilization, their self-respect is being shattered and their self-esteem is drowning in the fury of white supremacy. And it shares a strong emotional feeling that it is not the America for which his forefathers wandered around the world, it is not that America for which they had sacrificed their lives.

It was never America to me said the poet. But in the end, he didn’t let the hope go down and believes that America would be America again.