Racism in Song For a Dark Girl (Essay Example)

For many years, African Americans have faced racism, discrimination, oppression, and adversity. Discriminatory laws made by Jim Crow were set in place to limit the freedom of African Americans. Langston Hughes writes to express the adversity African Americans sustained throughout the last couple of years. "Song For a Dark Girl," Langston Hughes describes racism against African Americans in the South and the dramatic, public lynching they had to face. 

Literary Analysis

In the Jim Crow South, African Americans were oppressed and lynched purely because of the color of their skin. Jim Crow laws followed behind the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States. African Americans had established laws that limited the freedom of African Americans during the Civil War Era. The line “Way Down South in Dixie” (Hughes 1), in the poem is ironic because it is a word used to glorify the South in America and the repetition of the first line signifies shock of the hanging of an African American. During the Civil War Era, the South was considered the slavery region of the America, where they fought to defend slavery. Inwood says, “Thus the Alabama Constitution is an example of how the legacy of Jim Crow Segregation, and the white supremacy that formed a foundation for larger political, social, and economic inequality, continues to haunt the landscapes of the American South” (566). The legacy of Jim Crow’s South has a substantial impact on segregation, racism, oppression, and discrimination against African Americans. 

Lynching was an atrocity committed against African Americans in the South. Lynching consisted of white mobs publicly torturing and killing African Americans in the South. Lynching was typically used as racial control to oppress African Americans during the Jim Crow Era in the South. The girl in the poem weeps, “They hung my black lover / To a cross roads tree” (Hughes 3-4). Hughes describes how a black lover was hung to a crossroads tree, which is a form of lynching and terrorization among the black community. A crossroads tree is located at an intersection where four roads cross and meet each other. This represents how public and normalized lynching was in the South. Lynching had become normalized and “Lynching carried a similar kind of psychological force in the Jim Crow South” (Wood 758). Lynching was almost cultural for white Americans in the South to show their dominance over African Americans. Although lynching existed before slavery and segregation, it became more common for white Americans to lynch African Americans in the South because of racism. 

Religion within the African American community originated in Caribbean slavery. During slavery, African Americans learned what Christianity was because of white colonists and slave owners. Rather than partaking a white person’s religion, “Instead, they reinterpreted it in a ‘radically different’ manner to meet their needs for liberation from a most unjust and cruel bondage” (Mazama 500). African Americans thought that the Christianity white Americans believed in was a hoax and they did not want to participate in something they did not fully believe in. This correlates with why the girl in “Song For a Dark Girl” begins to question Jesus and her religion. The girl says, “I asked the White Lord Jesus / What was the use of prayer” (Hughes 7-8). She is expressing how she prays to Jesus and her prayers are not answered. She blames Jesus for her lover being hung and is pulling away from her faith in Christ, questioning her religion. She implies that Jesus is white, and this could mean that that is not her Jesus. 

Conclusion

To conclude, the discrimination against African Americans in the South was accepted into white Southerners’ culture. Although slavery and the Jim Crow laws are no longer existent for African Americans, they are still oppressed and facing adversity in today’s society. Hughes touched base on how the African American community faces different challenges in everyday life not only then, but now. Hughes writes “Song For a Dark Girl” to express the oppression and racism, along with the brutality of public lynching African Americans had to endure.