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Global issue

My global issue is how systemic racial injustice restricts individual rights and belonging through institutional exclusion. By systemic, I mean racial discrimination embedded in laws, spaces, routines, and social expectations that regulate daily life.

Institutional ostracism + texts

Institutional ostracism determines who may enter shared spaces, who is seen as part of the nation, and whose humanity is recognised. My literary text is Langston Hughes’s 1926 poem “I, Too,” alongside his wider poetry. My non-literary text is Gordon Parks’s photograph “Outside Looking In”, alongside his “Segregation Story” series.

Hughes + Parks methods

As a central Harlem Renaissance figure, Hughes exposes exclusion through the Black speaking voice, turning domestic spaces into symbols of psychological pressure and denied belonging. Parks, documenting daily life under Jim Crow, makes exclusion visible through fences, signage, and segregated facilities.

Founding promise + dignity

Together, they expose the contradiction within America’s founding promise. A nation founded on the claim that “all men are created equal” builds exclusion into everyday spaces. Yet neither artist reduces Black Americans to these imposed restrictions. Their works foreground dignity, agency, and the fight to regain belonging.

Opening line

I will begin with Hughes’s poem “I, Too.” Its opening line, “I, too, sing America,” is both an assertion and a corrective. Through its intertextual dialogue with Walt Whitman’s vision of America, Hughes places the Black speaker into a national chorus that has omitted him.

“too” + assertion

The additive adverb “too” quietly exposes that exclusion. The direct statement is unequivocal. The speaker does not ask for belonging. Rather, he asserts it.

Darker brother

This intensifies in the line, “I am the darker brother.” The adjective “darker” marks racial difference, but it remains subordinate to the noun “brother.” Hughes therefore presents Blackness as a difference within kinship, not a reason for segregation.

Synecdoche + They

The singular speaker becomes a synecdoche for Black Americans more broadly. In contrast, the indefinite pronoun “They” leaves those enforcing the exclusion unnamed. Racism becomes a system, not just one person’s cruelty.

Kitchen allegory

Hughes turns the household into a spatial allegory through “They send me to eat in the kitchen / When company comes.” The household becomes a microcosm of America.

Kitchen vs table

The kitchen represents forced invisibility, while the dining table represents participation and equal citizenship. Moreover, the speaker is hidden only “when company comes.” This exposes racism as a social performance.

Facade

The household already contains its “darker brother,” yet conceals him to protect a facade of racial hierarchy.

But + rhythm

The adversative conjunction “But” initiates a tonal shift. “But I laugh, / And eat well, / And grow strong.” The polysyndeton of “And” produces a cumulative rhythm, while the short, end-stopped lines convey controlled resilience.

Not victim

Hughes refuses to present the speaker only as a victim. Exclusion has not erased his identity. Paradoxically, it strengthens his determination.

Tomorrow + table

The isolated temporal marker “Tomorrow” converts hope into certainty. “I’ll be at the table” symbolises the reclamation of rights. The refrain returns with a decisive lexical shift.

Sing to am America

The poem begins, “I, too, sing America,” but ends, “I, too, am America.” The speaker moves from contributing to America to being part of America itself.

Shame

In the lines “They’ll see how beautiful I am / And be ashamed,” Hughes reverses the direction of shame. Disgrace is transferred from the excluded speaker to the system that attempted to exclude him.

I Look at the World

This spatial pattern extends across Hughes’s wider poetry. In “I Look at the World,” the speaker confronts a “fenced-off narrow space / Assigned to me.” The passive verb “assigned” shows that inequality is institutionally forced.

Lineation + I look

The contracted lineation mirrors his confinement. Yet the anaphoric phrase “I look” illustrates his growing awareness.

World to hands

The speaker looks first at the world, then at the “silly walls,” then inward at his body, and finally towards his “own hands.” This progression transforms perception into action.

Silly + comrades

The dismissive adjective “silly” strips those walls of moral legitimacy. The imperative, “let us hurry, comrades,” turns the solitary “I” into a communal “us.”

Harlem transition

Where “I Look at the World” imagines dismantling oppressive walls, “Harlem” warns of the consequences when those walls remain. The phrase “dream deferred” creates a sharp dissonance in meaning.

Dream deferred

“Dream” suggests hope and possibility, whereas “deferred” reduces that hope to something repeatedly postponed and denied. Through an interrogative cascade, Hughes explores the pressure created by prolonged injustice.

Decay quote

The dream may “dry up,” “fester,” “stink,” “crust,” or “sag” under a “heavy load.”

Decay meaning

This language of decay shows that exclusion does not simply delay hope. It corrodes it and allows resentment to accumulate. The final line ruptures the poem’s restraint.

Explosion

“Or does it explode?” Hughes abandons the earlier chain of similes. The dream is no longer compared to decay or burden. It becomes an explosion.

Praxis + Hughes ending

The isolated final verb turns suppressed pressure into collective praxis. Across these poems, Hughes’s recurring motif of enclosure moves from enforced exclusion to resistance.

Transition to Parks

Having examined how Hughes gives voice to exclusion, I will turn to how Parks makes exclusion physically visible. Parks documents daily life, not only dramatic events.

Parks overview

Segregation appears pervasive and inescapable, woven into daily routines until everyday spaces become instruments of control. Parks’s colour photography creates a disturbing contrast between visual beauty and institutional ugliness.

Composed images

His composed images make discrimination feel immediate, normalised, and impossible to escape.

Outside Looking In angle

In “Outside Looking In,” Parks adopts an eye-level shot from behind the children. We do not look at them from a detached distance. We stand behind them and share their sightline.

Gaze + fence

Their gaze directs ours through the chain-link fence towards the distant playground and Ferris wheel. The fence is more than a symbol.

Rigid grid

Its rigid grid obstructs our view, forcing us to experience exclusion through the image itself.

Foreground-background

Parks intensifies this inequality through foreground-background juxtaposition. The foreground is crowded with weeds and overgrown vegetation, while the playground beyond the fence appears open and manicured.

Denied possibility

Segregation is visible not only through denied entry but through unequal care, investment, and possibility. The playground is close enough to be seen, but never accessible. Parks employs compositional depth to show denied possibility.

Children not passive

However, the children are not represented as passive. Several press towards the fence, and the older girl on the right steadies a younger child with her hand.

Care + dignity

This gesture introduces communal care into a frame dominated by institutional separation. Segregation restricts movement, but it cannot eliminate solidarity or dignity.

Department Store sign

This inescapable control appears again in “Department Store.” The neon “Colored Entrance” sign is the most salient element in the upper-left frame. Its elevated placement creates a visual hierarchy, placing the racist label above the woman and the child.

Looming sign

The sign looms over them, suggesting segregation is a constant force hanging above Black Americans and looking down upon them. By intruding upon a routine outing, the sign embeds humiliation into daily life.

Hughes’s They comparison

In this sense, it speaks with the same anonymous authority as Hughes’s “They.” Both depersonalise power while revealing its pervasive reach.

Lighting

The lighting sharpens this tension. The artificial neon cuts through the soft daylight of a familiar afternoon. Segregation stands out visually yet feels normalised within everyday life.

Composure

Their pristine dresses and composed posture resist the degrading label imposed upon them. Their composure becomes a protective facade. Within a system they cannot escape, appearing unshaken becomes resistance.

Slipped strap

The slipped strap on the woman’s dress adds an unpolished human detail, allowing Parks to affirm dignity without idealising her.

Drinking Fountain

In “At Segregated Drinking Fountain,” Parks shows how institutional exclusion controls access to water, a basic human need. The frontal, eye-level framing presents a bright storefront filled with ice-cream advertisements, decorative patterns, and colourful clothing.

WHITE ONLY sign

The small “WHITE ONLY” sign remains visible, but embedded among larger advertisements, it can be missed at first. This delayed recognition mirrors how normalised segregation has become. Racism has been absorbed into the visual landscape of everyday life.

Man and girl

The man’s gesture towards the young girl is significant. He guides her towards the fountain while the others wait nearby. The image shows segregation being taught early.

Children taught early

Children are taught which facilities and spaces they are allowed to use. Yet it also records communal care. The adult protects the child within an environment designed to humiliate them.

Conclusion cruelty

Ultimately, Hughes and Parks expose the cruelty of a society that allows human beings to deny one another dignity and visibility. Their works may appear rooted in the past, yet they refuse to remain confined to history.

Racism adapted

The explicit signs of Jim Crow segregation have disappeared, but racial injustice has not. It has adapted, becoming less visible while shaping lived experience.

How much changed

A century after “I, Too,” these works force us to confront the unsettling question of how much has truly changed.

Final warning

If modern society calls itself just and fair while exclusion still exists, these works are not outdated. They remain a reminder of our ability to normalise injustice and a warning against mistaking the disappearance of visible barriers for the disappearance of racism itself.