Essay Questions

How does Walker emphasize the institutionalization of hypocrisy? - “For My People”

Walker emphasizes: “For my people blundering and groping and floundering in/the dark of churches and schools and clubs and/societies, associations and councils and committees and/conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and/devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches,/preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by/false prophet and holy believer.” The institutions delineated above that are expected to endorse morality, but they sponsor hypocrisy by advocating fads that guarantee selfish financial benefits. These institutions are hideouts of dishonesties for unethical people superintend them. Instead of dispensing morality, institutions bestow depravity and two-facedness.

What are the consequences of the land’s bitterness? - “Childhood”

Land is personified for Walker ascribes bitterness to it.Walker recalls:“also lived in low cotton country/where moonlight hovered over ripe haystacks,/or stumps of trees, and croppers' rotting shacks/with famine, terror, flood, and plague nearby,/where sentiment and hatred still held sway.”The inhabitants exploited land unreasonably for commercial benefits integral in cotton farming and deforestation. The land’s bitterness occasioned “famine, terror, flood and plague.” The adversative agricultural undertakings on the land enthused its acrimony.

How does Walker typify the intersection between White Superiority and Black Inferiority? - “We Have Been Believers”

The speaker, who is undoubtedly black, avows, “We have been believers believing in the black gods of an old/ land, believing in the secrets of the seeress and the/magic of the charmers and the power of the devil's evil/ones.” This affirmation alludes the conviction regarding the subservience of black people. The equation of ‘black gods” to “ the power of the devil’s evil” has nuances of exasperating black inferiority.

Also, the speaker recognizes, “And in the white gods of a new land we have been believers/
believing in the mercy of our masters and the beauty of/our brothers, believing in the conjure of the humble/ and the faithful and the pure.” This declaration surmises that the blacks underwrite the epitome on white superiority. The blacks’ predisposition to lionize the whites augments confound white superiority.