The game of hopscotch functions as an extended metaphor, representing the set of rules that Black Americans are expected to follow in order to navigate and survive in a racist society. Importantly, the speaker doesn’t let the reader know immediately what the game of hopscotch represents; instead, the metaphor works to slowly develop the meaning of the poem as it unfolds.
“One foot down, then hop! It’s hot,” the speaker says at the poem’s opening, suggesting, at first, that this poem really is just about a game of hopscotch on a hot day. Yet as the poem progresses, it becomes clear that the “rules” the speaker is invoking are all too serious and real, as are the circumstances of poverty, racism, and systemic oppression with which the addressee is expected to cope.
By the poem’s ending, the reader has become aware that this “game” is actually the racist system itself, which Black Americans are supposed to navigate by going through painful, impossible contortions. The only way one can “win” in such a context, the speaker suggests at the poem’s end, is by refusing to “play the game” altogether, refusing to accept the terms of a system designed to exploit and oppress Black Americans.
The metaphor works, then, to enact what the poem describes. As it unfolds through a sequence of increasingly difficult and untenable rules and directions, the poem suggests that racism and poverty have accumulating effects over time and are ultimately unbearable.