I’m not exactly sure what this was for. I remember we started it as a compare and contrast thing but then it was supposed to be an argument right? I’m not sure. Anyway, I’m just posting it to make sure I don’t end up missing it. Thank you.

But they looked like important Negroes on the way to your funeral
Looked like important jiggaboos on the way to your auction
And let them chant the number and use an ivory pointer to count your teeth

I can see something in the way of our selves
I can see something in the way of our selves
That’s why I say the things I do, you know it
But its something else to you

And no Americans, very few Negroes, will get out
No crackers at all
But the black man will survive America
His survival will mean the death of America”

The Baraka poems come together to have a continuous conversation about the struggle to maintain a concept of American identity within the inherently oppressive American power complexes, particularly in terms of Black identity. Both, “Something in the way of Things (In Town)” and “Who Will Survive in America” seem to suggest revolution of enlightenment. They seem to imply that it is necessary for the Black Americans to withdraw from a system that gladly and systematically exploits their culture, while simultaneously condemning them when they attempt to embrace it as their own. As a solution, both poems preach the necessity to accept and promote a Black identity in which Black Americans do not pardon oppression, racism, marginalization and exploitation in the name of assimilation.