Dreams

The theme of race and gender persists throughout the poem. In a sense, the speaker belongs to two marginalized identities: She’s a woman and Black. The marginalization the speaker experiences as a Black person is explicit. The speaker says, “[B]lack people aren’t / suppose to dream” (Lines 3-4). The two lines are short—a total of six words—but significant. They point to the deep-seated racism in the United States.

In America, Black people were bought and sold as slaves. After 1865, the United States abolished chattel slavery. Lethal racism continued through duplicitous laws—known as Jim Crow laws—that made Black people vulnerable to harassment and wanton violence. The racist laws intended to keep Black people down and to make them think they had no business dreaming of a better future.

The speaker's younger self isn’t aware of these racist norms, so her race doesn’t prevent her from dreaming. She dreams of becoming a singer in the Raelettes. The existence of the Raelettes and Ray Charles complicates the theme of race. During the mid-20th century, Black people like Charles and the Raelettes could dream and achieve success—they could occupy the limelight. Conversely, race could turn the dream into a nightmare. In Longreads, Tari Ngangura writes,