Racial Inequality In Richard Wright's Black Boy

Every black male's plight in America can be regarded as a provider for his family. However, society does not afford black males the benefit of feeling secure about providing for their families. It can be easy for anyone to criticize society and place the blame on America for not affording Walter the opportunities of his white counterparts. Walter does not have control over his own responsibilities. Therefore, if he was given all the resources needed to provide his family his poor judgement and lack of business sense would create further stress on the family. Ruth, Mama, and his sister Beanetha attack him from every angle about his doubtful ideals. Ironically, those ideals are what Walter needs to shape and justify his manhood. Without ideals and proper resources to obtain them, a man's existence can be regarded as insignificannot

To show first hand to the whites the inequality’s and hardships that the blacks face, the entire first section is in a narrative and a descriptive format. The use of these types of essays lets the readers feel more involved in the story and feel things for themselves. Split into two sections within itself, this first paragraph juxtaposes two stories — one about a “young Negro boy” living in Harlem, and the other about a “young Negro girl” living in Birmingham. The parallelism in the sentence structures of introducing the children likens them even more — despite the differences between them — whether it be their far away location, or their differing, yet still awful, situations. Since this section is focused more towards his white audience, King goes into a description of what it was like living as an African American in those times— a situation the black audience knew all too well. His intense word choice of describing the boy’s house as “vermin-infested” provokes a very negative reaction due to the bad

Richard did not understand until later that the black community discouraged his rebellious ways because following the expectations of whites was a way to ensure survival of the community. A rebellious act of one black not only put his or her life in danger, but also his or her family and the entire black community. Richard’s need to conform to the rules of the white society for survival and his need to rebel in order to achieve his humanity and individuality was a tension that infested him daily.

Throughout the book, Richard shows ignorance when it comes to race issues. He often doesn't know how to respond or act when he is being harassed about his race. This ignorance comes from his family refusing to tell him about what was happening in the world when he was a child. At one point, his mother even slapped him for asking about why there was segregation and about why his grandmother is “white” (46-48). These events and actions in his youth would lead to him being ignorant of these issues in his adulthood, which would lead to Richard being isolated from both the black and the white communities. First, one example of his separation from the black community is when Richard refuses to steal from white people. “More than once I had been called a ‘dumb nigger’ by black boys who discovered that I had not availed myself of a chance to snatch some petty piece of white property that had been carelessly left within my reach”(199). The other boys call Richard out because he refuses to steal. He does this because he was raised not to steal from white people while the other boys were raised to take advantage of their position in life and use it to their advantage. This gap between knowledge of how one should act leads to Richard being isolated from the other boys and others in the black community. Likewise, Richard ignorance of race issues leads to a rift between him and the white community.

The next form of hunger that Richard encountered was one for literature which seemed to give him a release from the suffocating reality of his surroundings. His appetite for literature became a defining characteristic as the novel progressed. Though her effort was short-lived, a boarder at his Grandma’s house, Ella, gave him his first taste of reading. “As her words fell upon my new ears, I endowed them with a reality that welled up from somewhere within me…. My sense of life deepened…. The sensations the story aroused in me were never to leave me” (Wright 39). In light of Richard’s continued pursuit for knowledge critic Dykema-VanderArk reflects that, “Richard's reading opens his eyes… ‘made the look of the world different’ and let him imagine his life under different circumstances. Richard eventually recognizes that the social system of the South strives to keep black Americans from just such ways of thinking.” His craving for literature sets him apart from most of the black community surrounding him.

2. The novel “Black Boy” by Richard Wright is structured into twenty chapters and two parts. Part one is about Richard Wright childhood and growing up in a difficult time where whites are cruel to all African Americans. Part two focuses more on Richard’s life as an adult and how he struggles to maintain a good job. The story starts from when he is a young child and to when he is an adult.

In the story, Richard had mentioned about the loss of his identity, his speaks of language and his family. We can see that when he said, “I did not know that I had a family, a history, a culture, a source of spirituality, a cosmology, or a traditional way of living. I had no awareness that I belonged somewhere. I grew up ashamed of my Native identity and the fact that I knew nothing about it”. This shows he was angry that there was no one tell him about where he belonged and his culture.

“Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.” –Richard Wright, Black Boy. The author suffered and lived through an isolated society, where books were the only option for him to escape the reality of the world. Wright wrote this fictionalized book about his childhood and adulthood to portray the dark and cruel civilization and to illustrate the difficulties that blacks had, living in a world run by whites.

No matter how hard they try, there are some people who cannot get ahead in life. Walter Lee Younger is a man who is frustrated with his current position in life, and every disappointment he has encountered thus far. Although he tries to be a loving man, sometimes he does not know how to show the idea of love, 'Sometimes...sometimes...I don't even know how to try' (Hansberry 89). His position in life can be regarded as symbolic of every black male struggling to provide for his family by any means necessary. Although Walter has a job, it seems inadequate for his survival. As a result, he has become frustrated and lacks good judgement. Throughout this play Walter searches

"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 the end, Richard realize that he doesn’t think that satisfying his hunger isn’t as important as all that is happening with the world. The concept of hunger helps him understand what needs to be

Wright’s inclusion of the term “American Hunger” in the title also makes a statement about the impact of race on American life in the early 1900s. Including it behind Black Boy in the title of the complete memoir (published in 1977) speaks to the fact that in many ways, “American Hunger” was synonymous

     Richard Wright's novel Black Boy is not only a story about one man's struggle to find freedom and intellectual happiness, it is a story about his discovery of language's inherent strengths and weaknesses. And the ways in which its power can separate one soul from another and one class from another. Throughout the novel, he moves from fear to respect, to abuse, to fear of language in a cycle of education which might be likened to a tumultuous love affair.

He kept everything separate and tried not to allow powerful emotions to touch him. Like Papa Midge, Richard lived before men expressed emotion. Partitioning emotions might have been something they learned to cope with the horrors of war, but raising a family, as I am learning now, “doesn’t love a wall.” That phrase belongs to Robert Frost who wrote about stone walls. He wrote about a pair of neighbors who would meet each spring to repair an old wall that was damaged during the winter. Walls make good metaphors, as Updike knew when he sat down to write Richard’s story “Separating,” but they don’t serve the bonds between family

starvation. This keeps coming back into his following life. With the type of hunger that Richard explained is worse than one person who has not experienced a constant hunger can even imagine. "Once again I knew hunger, biting