Langston Hughes was a Language and literature good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
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Did Hughes' decision to support fighting in WWII come before or after the sudden switch by the Communists from peace to war? The article does not make it clear if he was just following the party line, or sincerely thought that segregation was not as bad as he had thought. More references to his own writings on the subject would be useful, as well.86.167.55.125 (talk)
Since I made a BOLD edit of this possibly controversial section on this semi-protected page, I'll describe my changes in more detail here. I am no expert on Hughes, and am not trying to change the meaning or conclusion presented by the section; these were merely attempts at making the section flow smoother.
I deleted an unsourced sentence/one that wasn't supported by the sources. While I'm sure that Hughes "showed a respect and love for his fellow Black man (and woman)", this claim didn't seem related to either that particular paragraph, or the contents of the sources therein. I'm not opposed to having this phrase, even in this section if need be, but it needs to be something the sources state.
I changed the wording to a less definitive (and perhaps less POV?) one on Rampersad's take, as he states that Hughes' actions "were not necessarily signs of sexual desire; more likely, they showed the lack of it". He also makes sure to preface these statements with the nuance of "whether his appetite was normal and adult is impossible to say". This reads to me as a hypothesis, wherein he's saying it's likely Hughes was asexual; in any case, given the actual content of the source, I don't think it's possible to state in Wikipedia voice that he definitively "denies Hughes' homosexuality" here.
Finally, I placed West's point in the "pro-Hughes' homosexuality" paragraph, as it makes more sense dialectically; it supports the idea he was homosexual, and is not a direct response to Rampersad's claims. If the original presentation (of West after Rampersad) is viewed as absolutely necessary for whatever reason, I suppose it'd be possible to rephrase her point to relate it to his more directly, though that would seem clunky to me.
Also, since the claim was sourced to only one scholar (West herself), I changed the phrasing from "other scholars", to mention her name specifically. I'm not sure if this follows Wikipedia's usual guidelines for NPOV presentation of sources? I'm not against having the original phrasing, it's just that it seems a little strange to talk about plural "scholars", then only use one as a source. I feel in that case, another source would be welcome for this claim.
Hopefully these changes aren't too controversial; I am open to discussion if people want to try improving it further, or find what I did wrong for whatever reason. LaughingManiac (talk) 13:14, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]