Police Brutality In Richard Wright's Black Boy

During the twentieth century, many African American writers wrote several texts that tell the story of their lives and experiences in the society that they had lived. This includes the author, Richard Wright who often wrote gruesome poems, criticisms of other African American writers, and short stories. Many of Wright’s text, like “Between Laughter and Tears,” “Between the World and Me,” and “The Library Card,” has challenged and reflected the brutal discrimination of African-American, socially, politically, and philosophically.

There is a major issue with police brutality within the confinements of the United States of America, within society in general. The problem of police brutality is not just a problem with African American, it is spread throughout all the races. “Mr. Castellani who is 20 years old, yelling and pointing at officers, who are posted down the street, after his ejection from an Atlantic City casino for being underage. Four officers rush him, take him down and begin beating him -- a fifth officer soon joins in.”(The Baltimore,Leonard Pitts Jr.). It just so happened that this man was black and had been brutally attacked by police because he said something they didn't like it. It isn't always African Americans that are attacked thought, in 2014 Donovan Duran, a Colorado MMA fighter, was beat and dragged to the hospital by police men claiming Duran was intoxicated and hallucinating. He was brutally attacked because of what he believed in, it didn't have anything to do with his skin color, as he was attacked by white police man and Duran turned out to be a Caucasian man with a family and a job. All of that was taken away from him the moment the cops dragged him into the hospital claiming he wasn't right in the head and the cops found him like that. In 2014 Donovan Duran, a Colorado MMA fighter, was beat and dragged to the

While all of this was happening, Wright was being tormented by everyday violence in the South. There was never a safe and secure environment for Wright to

Richard Wright was born after the Civil War but before the Civil Rights Movement. Blacks were no longer slaves but were still oppressed in the South. They were terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan and everyone around them, and had to constantly fear for their lives. Through the Civil Rights Movement, blacks fought for equality and an end to protest lynchings and the Jim Crow laws. Now, more than forty years after the Civil Rights Movement, things are not as dangerous for blacks but underlying remnants of racial discrimination still exists. It is a drastically different era from Wright's time and as he had many social comments back in his day about blacks in society, he would surely have something to write about today. If Wright were writing

"Whenever I thought of the essential bleakness of black life in America, I knew that Negroes had never been allowed to catch the full spirit of Western civilization, that they lived somehow in it but not of it. And when I brooded upon the cultural barrenness of black life, I wondered if clean, positive tenderness, love, honor, loyalty, and the capacity to remember were native with man. I asked myself if these human qualities were not fostered, won, struggled and suffered for, preserved in ritual from one generation to another." This passage written in Black Boy, the autobiography of Richard Wright shows the disadvantages of Black people in the 1930's. A man of many words, Richard Wrights is the father of the modern

In our nation’s history, African Americans have been treated unequally by whites. Since then, the treatment whites give to minorities has degraded. Now, white police officers have abused their power towards minorities. This is an issue that continues but we as a society can no longer ignore the fact that this is unconstitutional. African American communities have turned into the targets of racism. This paper will examine the repeated history of police brutality in America in order to explain the racism and injustice involved. America needs a policy to enforce the unjust treatment police give to African Americans.

Richard Wright as an African American male writer, uses his novel to explore how his society determined the

Police brutality is not a new subject. It has been around for numerous years, and like most issues, has resurfaced to the public’s eyes. The recent events brought up the question: Does there need to be a reform in the system in the police system? In this year alone, there have been countless cases of individuals being harmed or even killed by police officers for reasons that continuously are not explained. What has people more attentive to this injustice are statistics showing that most victims in these police attacks happen to be African Americans and other minorities.

While many people continue to say that race relations has increasingly improved after the civil rights movement, racism still occurs today. Discrimination and racism toward Blacks was considered normal after the Civil War and before the civil rights movement. Many white people could openly abuse black people in the streets and no one would care. Racism and discrimination only happens at a mid extent today, which is not as often as a when Richard lived. Richard Wright was born after the Civil War, but before the Civil Rights Movement. If he were to write an autobiography today, about a black boy growing up in the United States, he would write about the negative effects of racial profiling on blacks, the wealth gap between white and black families and how the Black Lives Matter Movement affects people.

In the racist South, African Americans constantly lived in fear under the oppressive rule of the white Southerner. Richard Wright, an African American from the South writes about his experiences with racism. His memoir reveals the pain and danger African Americans faced on a daily basis. In Black Boy, Wright reveals the economic effects of racism on African Americans in the United States of America.

Wright would first talk about racial profiling and discrimination. He would probably provide evidence by giving examples of modern discrimination. One example might include the Starbucks controversy where two African American men were arrested for trespassing despite doing nothing wrong. In this instance, the police used racial profiling and arrested the men simply due to their skin color. Wright would definitely write about how the men were apparently arrested for trespassing and trying

A autobiography called Black Boy, by Richard Wright was written seventy-five years ago. In his autobiography, he tackled some of the issues that are currently still happening in the United States. As a child, when Wright went to school and worked at different jobs, he’d seen a much of the racial discrimination, violence and unemployment along with other forms of racial inequality. Although racial discrimination, stereotyping and unemployment have decreased in the United States, it is still an active problem that people of color face. If Wright was alive in 2018, writing a novel about a black boy in United States, he would write about the racial discrimination, stereotyping and unemployment the black boy would have to go through.

Black Boy, a memoir by influential American author, Richard Wright, tells the story of Wright’s early life, focusing on his struggles under the segregationist, racist Jim Crow era of the Southern United States. When this harshly realistic depiction of a black American childhood was published it brought racism into focus for many Americans and provided an eye opening perspective on the legacy of unfairness and brutality suffered by Black Americans. Wright was born into poverty, suffering, and violence, yet he was able to develop into an artist who would affect the way millions think. Many factors affected Wright’s development, including the hate, abuse and isolation he experiences firsthand. However, it is clear that the most influential

As Wright said. “I would make his life more intelligible to others than it was to himself. I would reclaim his disordered days and cast them into a form that people could grasp, see, understand, and accept.” Wright did not just sit and watch black people suffer, he used his talent to write biographical story of black communist to reveal the lives and the suffering of colored people. From this, I have learned that I, as an immigrant student, have to make my voice heard concerning racist policies and contribute to make a difference in the current political situation of the United

   In the early twentieth century black American writers started employing modernist ways of argumentation to come up with possible answers to the race question. Two of the most outstanding figures of them on both, the literary and the political level, were Richard Wright, the "most important voice in black American literature for the first half of the twentieth century" (Norton, 548) and his contemporary Ralph Ellison, "one of the most footnoted writers in American literary history" (Norton, 700). In this paper I want to compare Wright's autobiography "Black Boy" with Ellison's novel "Invisible Man" and, in doing so, assess the effectiveness of their conclusions.