Similarities Between I Hear America Singing And I Too

By choosing to either foreground race in “I, Too”, or to manifest a color-blind ideology in “I Hear America Singing”, both poems connect with the abstract idea of “America”. However, these poems contest when it comes to what “America” is defined as; “I Hear America Singing” defines Americanness under the guise of American exceptionalism and assimilation, as well as through a color-blind ideology that projects an untrue America. “I, Too”, however, is much more realistic; through the illustration of double-consciousness, Hughes describes a connection to the notion of Americanism while simultaneously denying American Exceptionalism. Through this comparison, it becomes apparent that, due to the systemic, fictional belief in the United States that

Instead, this notion is correlated with an understanding of shared values, specifically that of freedom, liberty, and democracy. This, in turn, creates the idea that to be an “American” is to innately exude and be attached to these shared values. How can this be the case when the United States and its citizens so often correlate the notion of being American to their national identity when the United State’s own history displays the opposite? Clearly, the ideas and definitions of “freedom, liberty, and democracy” are not identical to each individual. Through the comparison of Langston Hughes poem “I, Too”, as well as Walt Whitman’s poem “I Hear America Singing”, the notion of what it means to be an American can simultaneously be seen as a similar, yet opposing

The speaker believes, however, that one day he will no longer be asked to go into a separate room because his family will realize his true beauty, and be ashamed for not seeing it earlier. They will see that he is, too, an American. This poem begins as a quite literal description of double-consciousness: the speaker is not only viewing himself through the eyes of others, but is also describing the two-ness of his African-American identity through this lens. He views himself as American, as someone that “sings” for the same ideals as any other American, and yet he is viewed as different because of his race: “I, too, sing America. / I am the darker brother. / They send me to eat in the kitchen / When company comes” (2-4). Even though the speaker sees himself in the role of a brother in this family, or as someone a part of the American identity, others who are a part of this family feel the need to other him because of his race. However, as the poem continues, he believes that tomorrow they will no longer dare to separate him, and will finally see his beauty in their family: “Besides / They’ll see how beautiful I am / And be ashamed – / I, too, am America” (15-18). Instead of seeing America as a fragmented