If We Must Die

Central to “If We Must Die” is McKay’s vague, allegorical language. Though it is easy to read the poem as a response to the race riots of 1919 and the general struggle of African Americans against a racist country, McKay was adamant that the poem is not about a particular race or instance of injustice; instead, he claimed the poem concerns all injustice and oppression. This makes sense considering the unspecified “we” in the poem who struggle against the vague “they.” Because of this lack of specificity, the poem became somewhat of a rallying cry for oppressed groups throughout the 20th century.

As Robert A. Lee argues, however, if a reader ignores this poem’s historical context so that it applies to anything, it risks losing the poem’s value (Lee, Robert A. “On Claude McKay’s ‘If We Must Die.’” CLA Journal, vol. 18, no. 2, Dec. 1974, pp. 216-21. JSTOR). Lee says that neglecting the poem’s commentary on the racial tension between white and Black Americans allows denial of “the urgency of the racial situation with which the poem is directly concerned; [it presupposes] slackness in the language of [the] poem” (221).