The narrator of this poem, "a little black boy", knows clearly the different connotations between the society's view on black skin color and white skin color but he also has an insight into the transcendent equality of humanity. The little black boy differentiates the distinctness between black and white. His skin is black, "as if bereaved of light" and his soul is white "as an angel is the English child." It is a paradox in his acceptance of white being the color of light and superiority but also is non-acceptance to his skin color being his only defining trait. As he says, "my soul is white" and therefore as a person, as a soul, he is not lacking light and he is therefore innocent, only on the outer facade is he dark. He accepts that his facade may appear dark because it is what allows his inside to be pure white.
It is a bit of a paradox because this darkness is what allows his inside to be light. "And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face Is but a cloud" that will shade him from the directness of God's heat and allow him to absorb this other-worldly knowledge better than the English man with his white and un-shaded skin. It is as if the black man has this gift that on Earth-- his skin color-- that allows him to be less ignorant than the white man because he has a better understanding of this transcendental world, the knowledge coming in from God in this extreme light form. The white man is too ignorant to capture much of this extreme light from God; the white man is ignorant not only to the transcendental knowledge but also to the black man's worth. It is paradoxical again in the sense that Blake acknowledges the inherent "goodness" in the color white and yet he still does not ascribe any overwhelmingly good qualities to the white man other than his coloring.
But in the Christian ascent to heaven, "the cloud will vanish" and there will be no differentiation between skin colors and the lack of light in the black boy's skin will be cleared like rays of sunshine coming through a cloud. This is where Blake's egalitarian ideas become more apparent because when a the black boy realizes that in God's transcendental world, "when i from the black and he from the white cloud free," they both become on equal and realizable terms. In the material world they are unable to truly realize their equality because it is a knowledge only of the intangible world. Blake is making a commentary that humans are equal in the heavenly world and also in the material world, but it is impossible for the white man to realize this equality in the material world because they do not have the dark skin to absorb pieces of this knowledge from the transcendental world, only the black man has this help. Humans can only truly realize their equality after they have transcended to the immaterial world and have been stripped of these "clouds of color."
The last stanza of this poem has what seems like and what has been critiqued as racism in the "and be like him and he will then love me." The "him" and the "he" are not quite clear if Blake is referring to God or to white man but I believe that the "him" and "he" refer to the white man because in Christianity and in this poem God is portrayed as loving all and "giv[ing] his light and giv[ing] his heat away" to all creatures of the earth, so it would seem contradictory to have the black man have to earn God's love. It seems more plausible that it is a commentary by Blake on the white man's lack of love for the black man in the material world but his realization in the immaterial world, with the help of the "shade from the heat" from the black man, that all humans are equal. the black man helps the white man learn and the white man loves him not only for his help but also for the lesson that the black man helped him realize that all humans are equal in God's world. It isn't so much a racist comment, as some people have critiqued Blake but more a criticism of the white man's inability to love the black man in the material world.
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