A particular poem by Langston Hughes that stood out to me was “Let America Be America Again.” This poem talks of how the ideals that America and the “American Dream” were built on do not apply for everyone that make up this nation. Lines such as, “but opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe,” are countered with lines like, “(There’s never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this ‘homeland of the free.’)” America boasts the importance of liberty, equality, freedom, etc.; however, not every person in America has these important rights our nation was built on. For those of color, achieving these aspects of the American dream has been an on-going battle throughout the entirety of the nation’s history.
I found this poem particularly interesting because of the present day relevance with the similarities it holds with the slogan of the Trump administration: “Make America Great Again.” This slogan closely mimics the title of the poem. Both the poem and this slogan infer a greater America in the past, but for those of color, America has never been great; issues such as the oppression and segregation of African-American citizens were only more severe. Although America is still not a land of equality for minority groups, comparing this present day America to the America 100 years ago, America is technically “greater,” even if not by much.
One question that always comes to mind for me when I read “Make America Great Again” is what is it that made America great? Institutionalized sexism? Racism? War? Conservatism? These are all traits that plagued both plagued and defined previous American decades, and looking at Trump’s policies and ideas, it has become more and more clear that he only wants to “Make America Great Again” for a select group of people, and not necessarily all Americans.
I liked how you highlighted the contrasts that Langston Hughes made in his poem. There’s the idea of what people think of as the American dream and then there’s the reality that this dream is only possible for privileged citizens. The American dream, as Donald Trump is defining it, takes on a completely different meaning than it did for Langston Hughes, but many people are still facing the same problems of inequality when trying to achieve the “American dream.”
I love this comparison. It’s true that this does have a very similar ring to the rhetoric we hear now–that’s the beauty of intersectionality. African Americans and White Americans may share the privilege of belonging to this country, but social equality is far from reality when it comes to race.
This is immediately what I thought of when I started reading this poem. It seems obvious that this connection would be made and you have to think that there was some inspiration drawn here from the poem when the campaign slogan was being created. It’s a shame that the rhetoric of the two sayings are such polar opposites. Both are nostalgic, but one is nostalgic for a dream of what the country could’ve been if it stuck to its beliefs on equality, and the other is nostalgic for some warped vision of some mistaken prior greatness.