Langston Hughes ("Who's Passing For Who?")

If it were the white race that was terms

down instead of Negroes, Caleb Johnson would be one

of the first to volunteer Nordics the sympathy of his utterly inane society, under the impression that in some manner he would be doing them a great deal of near(a) (Hughes 564).

But Hughes quickly shows that the black fabricator has a evaluate of self-aw atomic number 18ness with respect to his own shortcomings: "We literary ones . . . considered ourselves too broad-minded to be bothered with questions of color. We liked people of any race who ingest incessantly, drank liberally, wore complexion and morality as loose garments, and do gambol of anyone who didn't do likewise (Hughes 564).

The story, of course, turns on the joke that the white rival plays on the black narrator and his friend. It is a joke which reveals the racial prejudice of the narrator---prejudice which the narrator disavows in the foregoing statement. Hughes adopts a breezy, devilish style to get across this revelation.

The narrator and his friend bring disdain for Caleb and his white friends in the beginning of the story. They handle Caleb for his befriending of whites, and they mock the whites for what they see as those whites' condescension toward blacks, as if blacks were quaint creatures created for whites to sift to understand and appreciate. At the same time, Hughes shows the whites to be naive, innocent dupes made to be ridiculed by enlightened blacks such as the narrator and his fr

There is an intensity and an passion in McKay's writing which is nowhere to be found in Hughes. Even during the most heated section of Hughes' story---the argument over the white man's defense of the light-colored black woman---the prevailing feeling is humor rather than malice or rage. Reading this facet in Hughes' story, the reader is more likely to smile recognizeingly rather than to feel the physical and psychological tension which some any scene in McKay's story elicits. These differences in set up on the reader are the result of the attitude of from each one writer toward the subject of racial prejudice, and the style which expresses each attitude.

The complexity and tension in McKay's story is meant to reveal not sole(prenominal) the racial prejudices of his characters, but also the complexity of the characters themselves. We come to know McKay's characters in a way which is absent from Hughes' story, which focuses instead on the "joke" played by uninventive whites on stereotypical blacks. We come to care closely Susy and Zeddy, whereas we feel little if anything emotionally for the characters in Hughes' story. We are satisfied when Susy and Zeddy dance together at the end of the story, despite the fact that it is likely their relationship go forth not last.

everybody laughed. And laughed! . . . All at once we dropped our professionally conscious "Negro" manners, became natural, ate fish, and talked and kidded freely like colored kinfolk do when there are no white kinsfolk around (Hughes 567).

The "joke" is that the black narrator and his friend are revealed as being just as prejudiced as the whites they were originally mocking. The narrator takes the joke fairly well: " whatsoever race they were, they had had too much fun at our expense---even if they did get for the drinks" (Hughes 567).

The four settle in for dinner, with the blacks "shocking our white friends with tales about how many Negroes
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