Who‘s Passing for Who Essay Example

to the white people’s enthusiasm in a bored and arrogant manner.

After the conversation, a black man knocked down a woman in the restaurant. One of the white people at the narrator’s table mistook the woman to be white and angrily confronted the black man about knocking down a white woman. Once he found out that the woman was a light-skinned black woman, he neglected to further defend the woman. When the black men asked why he only defended the woman when he thought that she was white he became defensive and eventually left the group. Over dinner, the white couple in the group questioned the black men about the light-skinned black people.

They wondered if many people who were black could pass as white and the black men confirmed it true. The white couple the revealed to the group of black men that they were in fact black people that passed as white individuals. The narrator then explains the change of mood in the group; the atmosphere became more comfortable, relaxed and natural, knowing that they were all the same. After the group’s pleasurable night, the couple went to get in their cab and yet again, revealed more information.

They said that they were actually not black people at all, but they figured that they would pass as black people just as black individuals passed as white folks. This information confuses the men; they can’s figure out if the couple was actually black or white. All they know is that they had a great night with a couple of friendly people. Langston Hughes lived during the Harlem Renaissance, a time of prosperity among black artist and writers,

and at the height of racial discrimination. Whether it was Jim Crow laws or poll tax, black people were always being put down.

Hughes was one of the most influential individuals of the Harlem Renaissance. He was a great visionary of his time and understood that racism was actually hurting the country. During World War 2, Hughes wrote in one of his poems “‘Jim Crow can’t fight for democracy . . . / If you want to get Hitler’s goat,/ abolish poll tax so folks can vote’” (Blue). This shows Hughes’ belief that race discrimination greatly hindered the United States. In Hughes’ eyes, an essential piece of the puzzle to solve World War 2 was to incorporate all of it’s citizens, even black individuals.

He also points out that America, that is supposedly a “democracy” in fact, is not. In order to be a democracy, a nation has to take all citizens’ ideology into consideration, and the United States was not doing that. Langston’s “Who’s Passing for Who” demonstrates the fact that “color blind” people are natural and comfortable people. When the black folks believed that they were among other black people, they became closer. However, in reality, the “black people” were really white people. Therefore, color really had no effect on their relationship, it was their beliefs and sociality influence that separated them.

Once the factor of beliefs were gone, nothing held back the peace and unity in their group. Langston Hughes’ “Who’s Passing for Who” shows the issues regarding racial discrimination that was occurring at the time of the piece and confronts those issues with a solution of “color-blind” people. The Harlem Renaissance allowed Langston Hughes’

ideas to penetrate the minds throughout the country. His ideas in “Who’s Passing for Who” displayed his dream of a “color-blind” world. Langston Hughes was not only essential to the development of the Harlem Renaissance, but also in the development of our magnificent nation.