19 pages • 38-minute read
High to Low
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Symbols & Motifs
Racism
Content Warning: This section of the guide features discussions of racism.
As with money, the poem never explicitly mentions racism. The poem does not contain any references to Jim Crow, segregation, slavery, or lynchings. However, the idea of racism underpins the three key themes. By focusing on class, the speaker repositions the conflict, moving it from race to socioeconomic status. The speaker isn’t battling an entrenched network of racist laws but a specific, identifiable person. The class antagonism makes the problem less overwhelming. If the “low”-class addressee can “uphold the race” (Line 21) like the speaker, then they won’t have as many “problems.”
The focus on money causes the speaker to perpetuate racist tropes about Black people. However, the speaker isn’t talking about the behavior of all Black people: They’re spotlighting the conduct of Black people with less money. Black people from the lower socioeconomic class “look too black” (Line 6) because they reinforce the racist belief that Black people don’t have money, and their lack of wealth is inseparable from their crass behavior. The speaker isn’t “too black.” They have status and money, so they counter the racist notion.
Nevertheless, the speaker is Black, and they’re keenly aware of the lethal racism facing people with their skin color, referring to it as “our troubles” (Line 2) and “our problems” (Line 24). However misguided and problematic, the speaker sincerely wants to diminish racism, and the pressure of providing positive representation causes them to lash out at the addressee.
“Too Black”
The speaker tells the addressee, “[You] look too black” (Line 6), bonding Blackness to unwealthy socioeconomic status. Thus, Hughes’s poem links money to race and behavior. The contemporary journalist Isabel Wilkerson makes a similar connection in her study on race in the United States, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020). Wilkerson sees race as inseparable from an implicit caste system within the US. Black doesn’t merely symbolize a skin color, but a socioeconomic status. As the latter is undesirable and, in Hughes’s diction, “low,” so is the former.
In Hughes’s poem, the speaker occupies a “high” position, so they’re not at the bottom of the “caste.” Since the speaker lacks the poverty racistly associated with Black people, they feel like they’re not “too black” (Line 6). At the same time, the poem’s speaker still experiences the need to “uphold the race” (Line 21). The pressure to represent Black people indicates that affluent Black people, despite sitting “higher” in society due to money and status, remain tied to less moneyed Black people by the shared color of their skin. In other words, the symbol isn’t sturdy, as the “high”-class speaker symbolizes Black people, too.
Harlem as an Elegant Space
Hughes published “High to Low” in a Montage of a Dream Deferred, which he thought of as one long poem capturing the diverse atmosphere and attitudes of Harlem. Hughes alludes to Harlem when he mentions “St. Phillips” (Line 14) and the apartment building at “409” (Line 17). He also alludes to New York City in general when his speaker references the “Ethical Culture” school (Line 12). The allusions turn Harlem into a symbol of a prestigious, exclusive place. The speaker doesn’t have to explain the meaning to the addressee because the addressee doesn’t have access to the spaces. The addressee doesn’t act like they’re in a relatively prosperous neighborhood in a great Northern city; rather, the addressee behaves like they “were down South” (Line 16). The South symbolizes a tawdry place, where there was once slavery, and, at the time the poem is set, explicit segregation. The tragic irony is that the North contained lethal racism. The presence of all-Black communities like Harlem is a product of the de facto segregation that impacted supposedly liberal Northern places like New York City.
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