Langston Hughes, More Understanding Than

Langston Hughes, more understanding than Du Bois about White prejudice but less optimistic about White-Black genuine relationship, describes the misunderstanding and wide cultural differences between blacks and whites. In 'The Blues I am playing," a wealthy woman shows deep interest in a black protegee wanting to know as much s possible about her life even venturing to go into Harlem to do so. Distance came when the girl pursued her own path, contra to that of the woman's objective of her married her boyfriend and persisted in playing the music that she loved. (Jazz of the Black race not the classics of the White one)

When the girl tried to tell her about the beauties of the Blues, Mrs. Ellsworth failed to understand her.

Father and Son is the story about the White Colonel's favorite son, Black, born of a Negro mother. He was the brightest and 'baddest' and most similar to the Colonel. There are some disturbing scenes such as when the Colonel had flogged the young child for calling him Papa in front of White guests, but the Colonel's affection for the boy indicates that cultural pressure may compel the White man to act in certain ways that are disdainful to him too. Longing to hug and connect with his son, cultural pressures caused distance between them. And it was the pressure of something far bigger and more intimidating than each of them that caused son -- who really liked father -- to kill his father and the father to threaten his son.

The story is also interesting in that we see that both Cora, the Colonel's mistress and Oceola, Mrs. Ellsworth's protegee, return to their roots. Here is where Langston Hughes and Du Bois have commonalties. Cultural differences, at the end of the day, seem to remain distinct despite biological connections and surface warm feelings between White and Black. Cora truly loved her white colonel. Yet she defended her son more than she did him and cared more for her son's safety than for his body. * felt fond of O. yet she was too hurt to even attend the wedding and the partnership eventually dissolved. 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.