Dunbar Class Discussion

I was part of the third discussion group on Wednesday that talked about Dunbar's dialectical poems.I personally really enjoyed all of his poems but the dialectical poems stood out the most to me (except for the Haunted Oak one, that one was just creepy). I don't really know how I stand on the issue of whether or not the fact that these poems cast African Americans in a bad light and Dunbar did this on purpose. I think that Dunbar knew that the image of the friendly black story teller that was made famous by uncle Remus was a way to sell books, to get his work out into the main stream. I think he was fully aware of the effect his work would have on white readers, that they might gloss over some of the little side remarks that Dunbar hid in his poetry. I think that although on the surface Dunbar's dialect poems reflect racist overtones to cater to the white population that were charmed and placated with the idea of a benign story teller but he digs in his own brand of protest over the treatment of black people with all of his side remarks and connotations. taken together the "mask" of Dunbar's characters in his poems can be seen as a farce.