The way of life and its culture
Racism takes us back to the days of slavery. African Americans were spoken down and severely beaten if they did not do as told. Racism exists even today in the twenty first century and will never go away.
There are two are two poems that clearly state racism taking place from beginning to end. “On the Subway” written by: Sharon Olds shows how society in the 1980’s and in today’s age separates whites from blacks. In the second poem “The Weary Blues” written by: Langston Hughes, shows the depression an African American man revealing his life trough his music. Both of these poems reveal African American people and their standards in life, reflecting off the people.
In the poem “On the Subway” written by: Sharon Olds, she is stating how Caucasian still felt about African American people, even after slavery. Sharon Olds writes “We are stuck on opposite sides of the car, a couple of molecules stuck in a rod of light rapidly moving through darkness.” (Olds lines 5-7) She is expressing that the red molecules are the African American people and the white molecules are the Caucasian people. African Americans sit on the opposite side of the train away from Caucasian people. “He has the casual cold look of a mugger, alert under hooded lids.” (Olds lines 7-9). Sharon Olds gives the impression of the hooded lids because the African American man is hiding his face. The man’s shoes also reveal his outfit, “His feet are huge, in black sneakers laced with white in complex patterns like a set of international scars.” (Olds lines 2-4) This also describes the outfit being of a lower class dress form, that of a rich class woman. The international scars are stating that of slavery, when African Americans were severely stricken with whips. Sharon Olds brings more slavery into her poem by writing, “I must profit from his darkness, the way he absorbs the murderous beams of the nation’s heart as black cotton absorbs the heat of the sun and holds it....