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“Theme for English B” has a searching tone. Used as an adjective, the term searching refers to an intensity of focus aimed at uncovering the truth about someone or something. The word is particularly apt for instances where an individual closely examines their own conscience. These definitions apply well to the speaker, who spends the poem carefully considering his own place in a racially divided society. The speaker doesn’t shy away from the difficulty of this subject matter, even when it leads him into moments of confusion. The poem’s searching tone is perhaps most readily apparent in the second stanza, where the twisted and highly reflexive syntax shows the speaker trying to work out his tangled thoughts (lines 16–20):

     It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
     at twenty-two, my age. By I guess I’m what
     I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
     hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.
     (I hear New York, too.) Me—who? 

The speaker seems to lose his train of thought as he tries to work out the complex relation between “you” and “me.” Indeed, the passage quoted here ends with him seriously asking about his own identity, as though he’s lost all sense of self. But the speaker moves through this momentary confusion by continuing to think carefully and deliberately. The speaker’s searching disposition ultimately helps him find clarity regarding who he really is, and about what links him to his white peers.

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