Rhetorical Analysis Of Whiteness By Langston Hughes

The explicit thesis of Hughes’ essay appears in the first paragraph. He asserts that “this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America--this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.”
Hughes primary audience is Black American artists, who he addresses with sincerity and disappointment in their failure to see their own unique and beautiful qualities. He is “ashamed” of the poet who wants “to run away spiritually from his race.” He also addresses his secondary audience, Black people who are not artistically inclined, with disappointment. He shows his distaste for the attitude that

He states: “But this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America--this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.” The three urges and desires that he lists at the end of the sentence are offset by the dash in the middle of the sentence. He says that the mountain is getting in the way of “true Negro art” and then lists the things that make up the mountain. This method of punctuation is effective because it makes the audience want to know what comes next. He mentions a powerful, blockading force, and the audience is more receptive to hearing what makes it up. He uses appositives throughout the essay, usually with slightly different punctuation. In the twelfth

He uses occurrences that might happen in a typical family to support his claims and attitude about upper and middle class Negro families. For instance, in a middle class Negro family, the father is “is a chief steward at a large white club,” and the mother sometimes takes jobs sewing or supervising parties for rich families. The children attend a mixed school, and “the mother often says, “‘Don’t be like niggers’” to her children when they misbehave. In a high-class Negro home, the husband “is perhaps a doctor, lawyer, landowner, or politician” who married the lightest woman he could find. They attend fashionable churches. If they live in the North, they attend white theaters and movies, and if they live in the South, they have at least two cars and live as much of their lives as they can "like white folks." He uses these examples to illustrate that even black people view the white culture and lifestyle as superior to their own. They draw their own “color line,” and “the word white comes to be unconsciously a symbol of all virtues.” While these things did happen, they were as much related to wealth and status as to race. Going to nice places and owning cars illustrate wealth within any community, not just the white community. And many things associated with white people were fancier or more