two versions of America Feb 16th

I think in Whitmans poem hes seeing the world in a blind way. I don't think he understood that black sloves were American too. He was from the north and while he didn't condone slavery he probably didn't put blacks in the same category as white people. I don't think in his poem he meant to exclude blacks but in his time they weren't really considered citizens...more property. Even in his poem he leaves women out in a why by saying yes they were singing america but when all the men went out at night, the women were not included in that group. When Langston Hughes was responding to his poem he was simply saying that blacks are just as American as Walt Whitman portrays those in his poem. He was saying that even though they were not treated as such that maybe they should have been included.