Racism in Richard Wright's Black Boy Essays

In Richard Wright’s novel, Black Boy, Richard is struggling to survive in a racist environment in the South. In his youth, Richard is vaguely aware of the differences between blacks and whites. He scarcely notices if a person is black or white, and views all people equally. As Richard grows older, he becomes more and more aware of how whites treat blacks, the social differences between the races, and how he is expected to act when in the presence of white people. Richard, with a rebellious nature, finds that he is torn between his need to be treated respectfully, with dignity and as an individual with value and his need to conform to the white rules of society for survival and acceptance.

His resolve to rise above his broken beginnings persisted while many other black people essentially ceded power to the dominant white population. He was never afraid to question what shaped his life, despite opposition, and he started with his lack of sustenance. Physical hunger was a critical factor in Wright’s existence that underscored his actions and gave weight to Black Boy.

Richard Wright’s theme in Black Boy is that of survival. In his autobiography, he struggles to pull through life by rebelling. He rebels in many ways. In the first stage of his life, when he is just a young boy he often rebels against his parent’s authority. When he is a young adolescent, he rebels against being beat unfairly or into submission. As a young man, he fights against the Southern way of African American life. As Richard Wright grows, his rebellious acts grow larger and more daring in order to survive the harsh Jim Crow life of the South.

A lack of self-awareness tended the narrator’s life to seem frustrating and compelling to the reader. This lack often led him to offer generalizations about ““colored” people” without seeing them as human beings. He would often forget his own “colored” roots when doing so. He vacillated between intelligence and naivete, weak and strong will, identification with other African-Americans and a complete disavowal of them. He had a very difficult time making a decision for his life without hesitating and wondering if it would be the right one.

“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.

his blackness to a racist, childish figure. As the doctors try to bring the narrator into consciousness

make it in a world dominated by whites. The story centers upon one 17-year boy who has

He also shares his decision of finally moving Northward to a purported better society. Through these experiences which eventually led him to success, Wright experiences the terrible racism and oppression towards the black folk during his time. Wright perseveres through this oppression to find salvation in the north even though it was not much different than the south in terms of how racist and how much the black folk were discriminated against.

The victimization that Wright endures in America’s structurally violent society impacted him educationally, occupationally and put his safety in jeopardy. When members of society are not given equal opportunity and access to the same necessities a hierarchy is put into place. There may not be any legal documentation of it but the status quo speaks for itself. The African Americans knew their place in society was below the Whites and they lived accordingly. By not having the same freedoms as Whites, they were at a disadvantage. Their lives were impacted because they could not have access to fulfilling their potential. When someones potential is taken away, it brings into question, what sort of living is being done. Unfortunately, the answer

In the excerpt from "Black Boy", Wright utilizes dialogue in order to establish Wright's first full recognition of his identity as a “colored boy.” While Richard and his family are traveling via train to Arkansas, he begins to notice the separation of blacks and whites. This acknowledgement sparks questions about his grandmother, who is a white woman. Richard is faced with the conflict “Man vs. Society.” He is struggling to understand the separation among blacks and whites because his grandmother has lived in the same home with them.

In the break in voice on page 266, Richard Wright reflects on the ideas of white men putting self-hatred into black Americans, causing them to eventually hate themselves.

In Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Richard’s interactions with his family and the white world force him to mature at an early age. First, Richard is forced by his family to mature through harsh beatings and verbal abuse that give him a strong sense of independence. Second, the loss of Richard’s father and other adult figures in his life forces him to accept a larger position in the household. Third, interactions with white people and racism force Richard to address them with complete conformity and respect. Richard struggles with his early maturation and attempts to avoid it by rebelling against his family and the white world.

Wright faces racial discrimination in the South that he was finding it unable to overcome. Racism in the south was harder for Wright to overcome because he does not challenge the codes of behavior that whites have set for blacks. Pease and Reynolds are two white optical workers who are quite friendly to Wright as long as he keeps his place and shows no interest in bettering himself. But they respond with terror when he shows some interest in learning their skills. Wright was able to transcend his environment by moving with his family to the north where racism was not a problem: “ The face of the south that l had known was hostile and forbidding, and yet out of all the conflicts and the curses, the blows and the anger, the tension and the terror,

Wright provides a specific example of injustice, and thus protests this subjugation that he was forced to endure by exposing its inequality and injustice. Wright’s presentation of this experience shows that the oppression of students must end, therefore, Black Boy is a protest against the injustices against

Bigger and his gang were nervous about robbing a store, just because they know that they would’ve gotten a harder punishment than if they would rob a black man. It just the way the world worked. When Bigger was much younger and his mom was looking for a place to live, they were confronted with a challenge. Due to their skin color, they are charged more than the average white individual to live in a home that was falling apart from the bottom up. Wright infers that because when you are a different color they treat you differently, even when all they were doing was trying to find a home and live a stable life.