The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes

In honor of Black History Month this year, I decided to read a work by an African American author. I had several options to choose from on my Classics Club list, but I eventually settled on The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes. Prior to reading this, I was only familiar with Hughes' poetry. I don't read much poetry in general, but my work as a teacher has brought me into contact with several of his most famous works. Hughes' poems, without a doubt, are beautiful and thought-provoking. I was interested to see how this collection of short stories would compare.

The Ways of White Folks contains fourteen short stories, each exploring different interactions between white people and African Americans in the 1920s and 30s. These interactions run the gamut of human emotions. Some of the stories are humorous, showing white people that fetishize black culture and fail to understand how their fascination with all things African is ironic and silly. Other stories are tragic, showing the naked racism and violence that white people regularly employed to terrorize the black community. Many of the stories fall somewhere in the middle of those extremes, showing the awkwardness, unfairness, and hypocrisy that inevitably arise between two groups on opposite sides of an unequal society. All of the stories, no matter their tone, invite readers to pause and think about how strange and cruel life can be. Hughes is an excellent storyteller, and his keen observations of human behavior feel genuine. One gets the sense that this is an important work with layers of meaning to unpack.

I enjoyed each story in the collection, but a few stand out to me. In"Passing," a young man who is able to pass as white writes a letter home to him mother. In it, he apologizes for pretending not to know her when he saw her on the street. He was with his fiancé, who thinks he is white, so he couldn't acknowledge his mother without revealing his race. He feels bad about this, but knows that if he wants to have any semblance of a nice life, he must keep up the ruse.  It's a clever bit of story construction by Hughes that in order to pass for white, he is forced to literally pass by those he loves.

In "Little Dog," a white woman who lives alone decides to adopt a dog for companionship. She relies on the black janitor in her building to bring her dog food each night. After a while, she begins to have romantic feelings for this man. Her thoughts are entirely inappropriate for more than one reason. Aside from it being unthinkable for a white woman to be with a black man in America during this time period, the janitor is happily married with a houseful of children. She becomes so disturbed by what she feels that she ends up moving away. Her sadness and confusion hit me in a personal way. As someone in an interracial marriage, the idea of pulling away from someone you like based on skin color is especially sad to me.

There are several stories more dramatic and tragic than the ones I mentioned here, but I think I like the quieter ones the best. These little moments of fear, confusion, and sadness are more like the racism I've observed in my own life, so it was easy to make a lot of connections to modern society. One only has to consider the recent rise of white supremacy groups in the United States and the comments about people of color made by our current president to find chilling examples of how the attitudes of whites haven't changed much over the years when it comes to race--they've just gotten a bit less overt. This collection provides an excellent place to start examining these attitudes, and to consider the dark legacy of racism in this country.

I haven't read very many short story collections, so I don't have much to compare The Ways of White Folks to. It is clear, however, that this novel, with all of its humor, sarcasm, violence, and tragedy, is a great work with something important to say. While I wouldn't term this an easy read, it is a quick one that will challenge readers to explore how race relations in the United States have developed over time. This was a fitting choice to celebrate Black History Month, and anyone interested in Langston Hughes would do well to pick this one up.


Challenge Tally:
Back to the Classics (a classic with a color in the title): 3/12
Classics Club (#11 on my list): 24/100

Total Books Read in 2018:9