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Richard Wright: A Black Man's Struggle

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From the time when he was almost abused to death by his mother and father at the age of four, to his young adult life where he was verbally and physically tormented by his white counterparts, Richard Wright fought through life, struggle by violent struggle. As an African American living in the South, struggle is a day to day battle. For Richard, one of the struggles is violence, and being that he was born and raised in the South, he doesn't know anything different. Violence, whether it be verbal or physical, is something that many southern African Americans faced. This struggle debilitated Richard throughout his adolescence, and it poisoned his views of white people, religion, and the South. In Richard’s early childhood, he is colorblind. He …show more content…

It isn't just his secularity, but his thirst for knowledge as well. Richard yearns to read, write and explore the scholarly world, which is frowned upon because in the South, black people must play the part of the modest, ignorant, African American who say yes, sir and no, sir. An example of this conformity is, “‘Ain’t you learned sense’n that yet?’ asked the man who hit me. ‘Ain’t you learn to say sir to a white man yet?” (181) Richard was violently confronted by a white man after he had offered to give Richard a ride, and he turned it down. This proves that if Richard says or does the wrong thing, he will provoke hostility. He knows in his mind what white people expect, but he doesn’t want to yield to that standard. Even teachers, principals, and other school mates of his expect something, “‘Listen, boy, you’re going to speak to both white and colored people that night. What can you alone think of saying to them? You have no experience…’”. (174) Richard was selected valedictorian of his class, and was assigned to deliver a speech. He was unaware that the speech he’d be presenting was one written by his own principal. This makes Richard furious, that his knowledge would be questioned because of his race. Richard has always wanted to break away from home, to go up north and become a writer. He invisions the

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He wrote an autobiography called “Black Boy” about the hardships of growing up as an African-American in the early 1900’s and racially segregated Southern United States. If Richard were to write about life as a Black Boy growing up in the US in 2018, he’d write about Police brutality and discrimination, worldly cooperation, and educational issues. Wright

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(Wright 47). Richard also asks many questions about his own race. He is very curious, and this curiosity puts the true roots of racism on the table. Richard’s questioning of these roots of racism due to his curiosity is showcased multiple times throughout the

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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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Wright is best known for a lot of exceptional pieces of literature such as “Blueprint for Negro Writing” which is somewhat of a declaration of independence from Harlem Renaissance writers. Richard Wright was born 1908 on a plantation near Mississippi. Wright personified the classic American dream. He went from being deprived intellectually and in poverty to a figure stone in literature. It was Wright’s childhood that shaped his dream for getting an education.

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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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He expresses that learning and accustoming oneself to the white man’s language implies the beginning of leaving behind one’s own culture to adopt the culture of the white man. He details the experiences of a colored woman in a relationship with a white man and a colored man with a white woman, and each of their intentions to gain the acceptance of their white counterparts. He further implies the supposed inferiority of the colored race as opposed to the superiority of the white race. Moreover, the only escape from this segregation of inferiority or superiority is the act of burying the past in the past and putting an end to the subjugation of one race by

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