16 pages • 32-minute read
my dream about being white
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Symbols & Motifs
Music and Dancing
Music and dancing are traditionally linked. The word “music” (Line 1) opens the poem, but the speaker does not start “dancing” (Line 17) until the last line. This may suggest that the speaker has a promise or an action that she can’t fulfill because she is distracted by this “dream of being white.” Music and dancing are often associated with joy and freedom. While the speaker “dream[s] of being white,” she cannot enact that freedom. When the speaker “wakes up /dancing” (Lines 16-17), it signifies an emotional shift from the world of dreaming to the world of being awake: She has shed old beliefs that paralyzed her. Rejecting false beliefs and accepting herself allows her to feel joy and freedom. It fulfills the promise that she can respond to the music that started the poem.
Nose, Lips, Behind, and Hair
The body parts that the speaker focuses on are the “nose” (Line 7), “lips” (Line 8), “behind” (Line 9), and “hair” (Line 4). These characteristics can distinguish Blackness from whiteness, the female body from the male body, and the African American female body from a white female body. For the speaker, presumably an African American woman, these body parts would be subject to intense scrutiny and would determine how a white-dominated society evaluates her humanity. Embracing all these body parts is an important step in the speaker’s ability to embrace her body—and herself—as a whole.
Clothes
Clothes can symbolize multiple concepts. Clothing hides the body, protects the body from injury, and can disguise or promote one’s social status. At the same time, clothes are also artificial and can be removed or changed. When the speaker notes that she is “wearing / white history” (Lines 11-12), she is comparing clothing (and all it represents) to the function that “white history” (Line 12) has for white people: It is protection for them, a cover-up, a disguise, and a way that people signify their social status. It is also removable; the speaker slips in and out of her “clothes” (Line 14) of whiteness in the dream.
These clothes are also a consumer product, and the more highly regarded clothes go to those with more money. To use this metaphor, the speaker suggests that what is essential is not a person’s body but their spirit, that which animates the body. It is curious that the speaker says these clothes do not have a future; this may imply that there is no future for her in pretending to be white, or it may suggest that a solely white history has no future because society is changing. History will belong to multiple cultures. By taking off these clothes of being “only white” (Line 3), she is able to wake up “dancing” (Line 17), a metaphor also affiliated with spirit.
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