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Hughes seems to indicate that cultural roots are so strong that each gets pulled indifferent directions.
In "Poor little black fellow," a similar incident occurs with a white couple adopting their dead servant's black child (they call the child 'it'). Also here we see culture doing things to the Pemebertons that they didn't like and compelling them to act in certain ways. They had to go first class, their adopted son second class. The white couple try to get him to go to Versailles. He prefers his Negro crowd -- again the cultural differences! And the story ends by Pemberton who had never been so emotionally disturbed over anything in his life fainting when Arnie announces his intentions to marry a 'white, white Romanian girl. To Americans such as Pemberton, Black and White do not mix. Enculturation dominated itself over everything, swamping fraternal feeling.
Du Bois, too, sees the dignity that is inherent in the Black man, and also discussed the irrationality of the concept called 'race' that consequents in prejudice and vilification...
In this, Langston Hughes and Du bois shares commonalties. Du Bois however see hope at the end of the struggle. He tells us that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line" (p.23), a problem that is global (p.40), but he foresees that "universities will be developed in the South to generate "broad ideals and true culture" and to liberate the "soul from sordid aims and petty passions" (p.60) as well as that White and Black will eventually forge a true and authentic unity. This where he differed from Hughes; he ultimately leaves White and Blacks separate in their own distinct worlds.
References
Du Bois, W.E.B. (2007). The Souls of Black Folk. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press Hughes, L. Father and Son. PBS
Hughes, L. Poor Little Black Fellow. PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/cora/works.html
Hughes, L. The Blues I'm Playing. PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/cora/works.html
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