Let America Be America Again Analysis

Let America Be What Could Be
America has never had a definite shape or form in regards to its identity, if ever it had one it was merely a construct. The American values that are constantly contradicts the realities of today. The overly patriotic America is too arrogant to willingly specify its imperfections and remedy them. In Langston Hughes’ “Let America be America Again”, Hughes exposes America’s flaws; he sheds light on the dark America that is of today regarding inequality, racism, and other injustices. Hughes, unlike his patriotic counterparts, comments on America’s faults; inequality and racism, a devil of a capitalistic economy, and the restriction of freedom, but provides some hope of rectifying them.
The so-called “home of the brave” and “land of the free” is not all that it’s hyped to be, America, just like any other nation, has blemishes.

Clearly, Hughes, was discontented with the America he lived in when he stated that there’s “never been equality for me”(Line 15). Hughes, like any black man in white America, feels cheated and betrayed, the promise of equality, broken, leaving him frustrated and distressed. In that society, the black man can never be equal to a white man, in terms of ability, power, competence, value, socioeconomic status, social class, and wealth. The reason why is that for too long we have allowed and accepted a system built from slave labor and discriminatory ideologies to place the white man in power and be resistant to any mutation. In the society that Hughes lives in and in the current one, skin color determines one’s chance of survival. Merit or virtue no longer has a say, instead racist ideologies and practices dominate the system. This is very conspicuous in housing, employment, the justice system, wealth and income, and even