Racism in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Selected Poems

Abstract

This thesis tries to analyse and dismantle the issue related to the racism which was carried out by American against African represented by white people and black people. It is constructed in the selected poems through writer’s experience as a black people who were being the victims of racism in America in the end of World War II. This research was conducted because there is a gap between previous research, success, love, wealth, and dreams that could not stay for a long time because the writer is black people which is contained in the selected poems. To support this research, the theory Semiotic of Poetry by Michael Riffaterre is used because this theory is focuses on how to find the signification of the poems. The type of research is qualitative which is an effective research method for identifying intangible issues such as issues of race, ethnicity, religion, social norms and other issues. This research uses two types of data in the form of primary data and secondary data. The primary data used in this study were taken from every words, phrases, and stanza of the poems, while the secondary data were taken from articles, websites, and several previous research that have similar topics with different objects. The result of this research is the found of how white people are treated black people especially writers differently. The writer used to be a son's of a former slaves who had a difficult life until he became a famous black writer and he has many white fans, but when he made a few mistakes, the public, especially white people, saw him again as black disgusting man