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Black Boy Research Paper

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Everyone has a way they feel about themselves. In Black Boy, a memoir by Richard Wright, it explores the challenges of an African American living in the South and always having White society around to bring him down in some way. Richard Wright has been a victim of racism on countless occasions, whether it be physically or verbally, he learns from these experiences as he matures and becomes aware of his own self worth when entering his adult life. In Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Richard’s journey and struggle throughout his early childhood to early adult years to reach his esteem needs is consistently shown when he is faced with the challenge of having to prove himself as someone who can accomplish something in life while tackling the boundaries …show more content…

Growing up as an African American living in the South, Richard is striving to become more than what White society expects of him and what other African Americans expect of themselves. While in search for a job to earn enough money to go to the North, Richard finds one with a white woman, but soon realizes that he wouldn’t go back because she had “assaulted” and “assumed” his “place in life” when she totally degrades him and his idea of ever becoming a writer (147). Richard knowing he lives in a racist world illustrates how he is still not letting nobody bring him down from his aspirations and what he wants to do with his life. Also, when Richard gets a hint that he may have an opportunity to teach in the city's school system, it helps him “emotionally” and makes him “hope faintly” (174). Richard being able to have such an opportunity illustrates that he is not paying attention to what White society expects of him and is exceeding what any other African American at this time would consider a success. Lastly, at Richard’s workplace, he and another African American boy were “duped” into fighting each other by Richard’s foreman, Mr Olin and other white employees (243). Afterwards, all Richard got out of this experience was “shame and anger” (243). The hate that Richard feels for himself and the other African American boy, further proves how he is becoming aware of his own self worth and won't let an experience like this ever happen to him again due to his motivation to

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Anthony Dykema-VanderArk opens his literary criticism of Black Boy by Richard Wright by stating that Wright’s primary interest in his writing is to focus on the “influence of the environment on a person’s actions and attitudes” (Dykema-VanderArk 1). Dykema-VanderArk continues by explaining Richard’s toxic environment, which was full of racism, violence, and hunger. He then emphasizes how this environment has affected Richard psychologically by creating distance between himself and his family, but also by giving Richard the ambition to “go to great lengths to resist limitations placed on him” (Dykema-VanderArk 1). Richard’s psychological detriment both motivates him and holds him back. Dykema-VanderArk depicts that the lack of psychological fulfillment ultimately affects Richard more than physical hunger, “Richard 's hunger becomes a symbol not of his positive yearning but of his isolation and loneliness, his sense of exclusion from the world around him”

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Richard, being a rambunctious and disadvantaged black boy living in a time when America was still firmly planted under the thumb of prejudice, struggles to relate to the wide array of people around him. From his childhood bullies, white and successful bosses, and his racist coworkers, Richard lives in a world where he is always an odd man out, an outlier and exception to almost every privilege. He himself says “…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…”

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Richard quickly grows up and is mature enough to ask questions about his race, which is clear when Wright says, “My grandmother, who was as white as any white person, had never looked white to me” (23). RIchard is starting to ask himself an important question: What does it mean to be white? He wonders why his grandmother is black instead of white, which commences his wonderings about what the roots of racism really are. RIchard begins to curiously ask more and more questions, showcasing his curiosity and need for answers, when he says, “Granny looks white.. Then why is she living with us coloured folks...did granny become coloured when she married grandpa?”

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Since they do not earn a decent wage, they don’t have the minimum amount of luxury in their lives. They are deprived of homes, food and other essential necessities. The effect of racial discrimination discloses on Wright in the guise of starvation. As a child, Richard could not grasp the concept of racism. But when he grows up, he acknowledges why he and his sibling need to feast upon the leftover sustenance of the white individuals.

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“I was learning rapidly how to watch white people, to observe their every move, every fleeting expression, how to interpret what we said and what we left unsaid” (Wright 181). Richard uses his observation of whites to guide himself on how to act and react around white people. For example he must agree with the whites even if he truly disagrees. For example he must agree with the whites even if he truly disagrees. “I answered with false heartiness, falling quickly into that nigger-being-a-good-natured-boy-in-the- presence-of-a-white-man pattern, a pattern into which I could now slide easily” (Wright 234).

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The story represents the culmination of Wright’s passionate desire to observe and reflect upon the racist world around him. Racism is so insidious that it prevents Richard from interacting normally, even with the whites who do treat him with a semblance of respect or with fellow blacks. For Richard, the true problem of racism is not simply that it exists, but that its roots in American culture are so deep it is doubtful whether these roots can be destroyed without destroying the culture itself. “It might have been that my tardiness in learning to sense white people as "white" people came from the fact that many of my relatives were "white"-looking people. My grandmother, who was white as any "white" person, had never looked "white" to me” (Wright 23).

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