The Upper-Class Black Household
Hughes describes the lifestyle and household of an upper-class Black family who aspires to whiteness: the father is a young professional who has likely married a light-skinned woman, the mother might have a maid, and the family in general surrounds themselves with white people. Hughes makes "Nordic manners, Nordic faces, Nordic hair, Nordic art" central to this description, showcasing how the lives of this particular group of Black citizenry are repetitive and devoid of any truly defining features (3).
The Low-Down Folks
By contrast to the upper-class Black household, Hughes also paints a portrait of the "low-down folks, the so-called common element," denoting neighborhoods and communities that, while considered lower-class, fully embrace the beauty and significance of their own Blackness (4). Hughes's own language becomes notably more energized and poetic as he writes about these communities: he imagines them sipping gin, watching their communities from their front porches, and engaging in their worship with fervor.
Rhythmic Imagery
Hughes frequently celebrates and evokes the energy of jazz music, arguing that it could be adopted by other artistic disciplines for aspiring Black artists. He advocates for a figurative return to jazz music as a culture itself, one that allows its people to dance and sing in the aisles of their church rather than standing solemnly with an open hymnal, as the white congregations do. In his appeals for this practice, he uses words that evoke the rhythms and sounds of jazz, such as saying that jazz is "the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul" (4).
