Racism And Double Discrimination By Lorraine Hansberry

In Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun a number of social issues are both explicitly and subtly exemplified through out the characters experiences and relationships. Living in a cramped Chicago apartment, the Youngers’ display both influential goals and conflicting restraints. Beneatha Youngers is a controversial character; she complicates society’s typical gender roles, introduces the wrestle between assimilation and ancestry of African-Americans, but specifically serves as a paradigm for her generation in the play.

The play Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry is identified as a modernist text for it challenges the life of African-American families living in an industrial environment. Walter and Beneatha’s mother,

Another theme and issue that arrives from the play A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, is racism. During the 1950’s blacks and whites were segregated. The house the Younger’s purchased was in the Clybourne Park neighborhood, an all white neighborhood. When Lena told the family they were moving to Clybourne Park they stood with amazement. “Mama, there ain’t no colored people in Clybourne Park” (p.734). The family heard of other colored families’ houses being set on fire in this neighborhood, they were concerned that the same thing would happen to them.

Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun, centers on an African American family in the late 1950s. Hansberry directs her work towards specifically the struggles faced by African Americans during the late 1950s. Through the dialogue and actions of her characters, she encourages not only a sense of pride in heritage, but a national and self-pride in African Americans as well.

Economic and societal poverty are the key forms of poverty highlighted in the three-act play, A Raisin in the Sun. Lorraine Hansberry, the playwright, discusses the hardships of African-Americans attempting to emerge in society in the 1950’s. The play is staged in ways where the audience can grasp the trifles of an African-American family continuously experiencing setbacks whilst attempting to achieve their notion of the “American Dream”. To Walter Lee Younger, his idea of the “American Dream” is that anything is possible for those who have money. Unfortunately, there is a minor problem: Walter Lee Younger is a working-class African-American man who struggles to make ends meet in the Southside of Chicago, Illinois. The family undergoes

    Lorraine Hansberry faced many obstacles in her life which has made her  write this book A “Raisin in the Sun.” As said in Blooms Literature “She was the youngest of four children whose parents were well-educated, middle-class activists centrally engaged in the fight against racial discrimination. Early figures in the Civil Rights movement.” In the book “A Raisin in the Sun,” the first play written by an African American she made through experiences of  black people who live on Chicago’s South Side, Hansberry used members of her family as inspiration for her characters. Lorraine Hansberry life had comparisons in this book dealing with poverty

The story of this play is simple and the majority of African-Americans faced such issues in the 1950’s, living on the south side of Chicago, struggles with poverty, dignity and dreams of a better life. Wanting better for your children and trying to fit in, while maintaining family values. A Raisin in the Sun is an excellent example of the relationship between family values and conflict. In this play it portrays: values and purpose of dreams, the need to fight for racial discrimination and the importance of family.

The only white character in the domestic tragedy play, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry tries to convince an African American family that segregation is in their best interest.

Though there was a heightened sense of tension over civil rights in the late 1950s when A Raisin in the Sun was written, racial inequality is still a problem today. It affects minorities of every age and dynamic, in more ways than one. Though nowadays it may go unnoticed, race in every aspect alters the way African-Americans think, behave, and react as human beings. This is shown in many ways in the play as we watch the characters interact. We see big ideas, failures, and family values through the eyes of a disadvantaged group during an unfortunate time in history. As Martin Luther King said, Blacks are “...harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what

Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun is a monumental play in the theatrical world. Produced in 1959, it became the first play written by an African-American woman to hit the stage and was later nominated for several Tony Awards. The play touched many controversial themes of the time including racial discrimination and poverty. The design of Raisin in the Sun, including scenic, costume, lighting, and sound elements, were crucial to developing the plot and emphasizing these themes. All of the elements are vital to the message and audience interpretation of the production, and overall, the Playmakers Repertory Company executed them well.

When A Raisin in the Sun debuted on Broadway in 1959, America was a much different place than it was today. Racism was as prevalent as ever in our schools, the workplace and the government. Segregation and Jim Crow was still law in most of the country. Not to mention even though women had the right to vote, women still did not feel like equals compared to their male counterparts.This social climate is what made A Raisin in the Sun such a success for the ways this play explored various social issues at that time. A Raisin in the Sun was so groundbreaking because it addressed the underlying racial and domestic tension that is covered up by the economic prosperity that we learned about in history class. From the role of the black man to even

Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun follows the story of the Younger family over a time period of several weeks, in which great internal and external change quickly occurs for its characters. Throughout the play, readers are able to see the arduous daily lives of the Younger family, as created by the segregated, racist society in which they live. Though no longer slaves like their ancestors, the African-American family is still unable to claim the same level of success as the white community without yielding aspects of their native culture. The accumulation of their struggles weigh heavily on each of the characters and, as the play continues, readers can see characters begin to acknowledge the restrictive social roles they have been placed into. Such confrontation likewise urges the characters to search for meaning in who they are and what they stand for in the face of oppression and segregation. The distinctions between the segregated white and black American communities of the 1950s are placed at the fore-front of the play, with the concept of assimilation taking on a large, necessary role as a great opposing force. By bringing assimilation into focus, A Raisin in the Sun manages to reveal the ____ through the play’s characters and their beliefs, highlighting the specific issues which hinder the Younger family on their journey towards a better life and in their search for identity and belonging.

During the 1950s, white people were considered more valuable than black people were. Blacks were considered very low and didn’t have many opportunities that whites had. In the play, A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, shows a story about a black family living in a white world. The Youngers were living in poverty Mama focuses on unattainable goals by defining herself with the standards of high white class and does not prioritize what she has to her advantage. Through years of fighting for a better lifestyle in the white community, she has lost her true self as an African American woman.

In the play A Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry, a story about an African American family living in Chicago. The book illustrates what the daily problems of an average black family had to deal with while living in America in the 1950s and their struggle of overcoming obstacles to reach their “dream”. Hansberry use this novel to address topics such as racism, racial inequality, and racial discrimination. In 1954, many people during that time supported segregation. People perceived whites and blacks completely different and people wanted them to be separate. Everywhere in the south had “whites only” or “colored”, and many wanted to keep it that way. History will always repeat itself and people are not

Life in the 1950’s was racist and hard for black people. Most blacks worked for upper class whites. Their dreams appeared to be out of reach. Although hoping for a better tomorrow, they still dreamed of a perfect day. Because of the hardship black men and women faced; their personalities, dreams and work ethics differed. In the short play “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, although there are similarities in their work ethics; the personalities and dreams of the characters are as different as night and day.