"" He says, "Fierce identification with the sorrows and pleasures of the poor black ""I myself belong to that class- "propelled Hughes toward the voice of the black Everyman."" Pinckney further notes that Hughes, "turned himself into a transmitter of messages and made the I' a collective I'."" Hughes also uses first-person to make his words more easily understood. This way most black people, even those less educated, can relate to his ideas. .
The use of the word "America- in both Pinckney and Hughes poem "I, Too- suggests that Hughes believes that it does not matter what our differences are; everyone living in America is an American. In "I, Too,"" Hughes refers to himself as the "darker brother- who is just as proud to be an American as white citizens are. He closes the poem by saying "I, too, am America."".
While Hughes wants black people to feel they are a part of America, he also wants them to be proud of their heritage. He uses racial terms for black people in both poems. At the age of seventeen, Hughes traveled to Mexico to visit his father. He saw that the Mexican people took great pride in their identity through their art. In his writing, he attempts to reawaken the black American people's appreciation for their own culture. .
Hughes expressed ideas which were progressive but were rarely accepted by white or black America at that time. As Pinckney in "Black Identity in Langston Hughes- writes, "The use of black' and the invocation of Africa were defiant gestures back in the days when many blacks described themselves as brown."" The civil war had taken place roughly 40 years before and there were still a vast number of white people who looked upon black people as slaves. The black people of America wanted to fit into the white man's world. So, when Hughes encouraged black people to be proud of their unique heritage and culture, many black people did not agree with this.