Page 77

The couplet exposes race as a code-switch the speaker performs in both directions.

The title promises solidarity, but the actual lines center on divided speech rather than easy belonging. Talking to a Negro like a white man and to a white man like a Negro suggests someone moving uneasily across racial scripts, never simply speaking from one uncontested place.

'Joining The Union': two-line code of conduct — talk to a Negro like a white man, to a white man like a Negro.

The poem sets a single-rule ethic against more complicated social machinery — the title's 'union' is personal rather than industrial. The rule's symmetry is the risk and the reward; it refuses to stratify address, which is the book's recurring moral move. The poem's brevity is what protects it from sounding like instruction.