Langston Hughes Lament For Dark Peoples

Langston Hughes’s “Lament for Dark Peoples” consists of a brooding three quatrain scene in which the speaker grieves a time before racial oppression. What is special about this poem is that it brings to the table a sense of solidarity between Blacks and Native Americans, who both have deep histories of terrorization from whites. The poem in itself demonstrates a recollection of life prior to white supremacy, but its core reflects the true loss and consequences of oppression on people of color. The poem initiates with the establishment that there was a loss of identity experienced by the two oppressed groups mentioned: “red” and “black”, or indigenous Americans and Africans. The speaker states that he was both a “red man” and a “black man”

In the third stanza, however, the speaker refers to civilization as a “circus.” This is ironic because here there are two opposing opinions: white people, who believe life in the jungle is barbaric and civilization should be the end goal for humanity, and indigenous people, who believe life in civilization is absurd. Continuing on in the third stanza, the speaker spends this portion of the poem mourning over what his life has become, separate from the red man or the black man, but as himself. He now “[herds] with the many,” or in other words, is indifferentiable from those who have had the same fate as him. The word “herd” alludes to the nature in which oppressed people were treated during colonist days -- like animals. Native Americans and Africans alike were forced to do manual labor, Africans were auctioned off like livestock, and whipped like them as well. In essence, the result of “the white man’s burden” still consisted of savage and barbaric behavior on the white man’s part, although savagery is what they claimed to try to steer indigenous peoples away