“And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.”

These lines are the ending two lines of William Blake’s The Little Black Boy. Blake is referring to the authority within our society teaching the young generation to acquiesce to the standards and bigotry of traditional thought. He is saying that we as citizens need to find another way to think because by accepting the ideas of our older generations we are accepting exploitation in our society. Commonly held beliefs cannot be unquestioned simply because they are popular notions at the time. Even parents, who represent a type of authority, must be questioned in the information they provide to their dependents. Blake asserts the necessity to question authority and think for yourself.


By Megan Callaway