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Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

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Racism and Assimilation in Chicago: Selling Your Soul to the System

Author Lorraine Hansberry explores racism and assimilation in her 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun. The play focuses on the Younger family, who are trying to make the most out of bad circumstances. The family gets a life-changing opportunity after their father dies and they recieve $10,000 in life insurance money. Each member of the family has their own idea of how to spend the money, from starting a business to becoming a doctor. However, all their goals seem unattainable due to the extreme African-Americans faced in pre-civil-rights Chicago. Through Linder and Mrs. Johnson, Hansberry suggests that such deeply ingrained white supremacy puts pressure on non-whites to give …show more content…

Hansberry shows how much African-Americans internalize white supremacy through Mrs.Johnson. Mrs.Johnson, a black woman, is the Youngers nosy next-door neighbor. When she hears about the family moving to Clybourne Park, she tells them to stay put. Though she masks her true feelings poorly, Mrs.Johnson pretends like the move is a good idea, saying “You hear some of these Negroes round here talking ‘bout how they don’t go wherever they ain’t wanted and all that...but not me, honey! (This is a lie.) Wilhelmina Othella Johnson goes anywhere, any time she feels like it! (With head movement for emphasis.) Yes I do! Why if we left it up to these here crackheads, the poor niggers wouldn’t have nothing…” (pg 21) Mrs.Johnson pretends like she hasn’t assimilated, but she has. Whites have made it very clear that the races should be segregated, and Mrs.Johnson accepts it. Society has said blacks are lesser for so long that she believes it herself now, and she resents the Youngers for tryign to reject it. Mrs.Johnson also refers to black people by a racial slur. Hansberry do this to show how she has dissociated herself from her race. By using the slur she is degrading her own people down to where whites see them to be- inferior. As the conversation progresses and

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she tempted a negro. she was white, and she tempted a negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable: she kissed the black man. not an old uncle, but a strong young negro man. no code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards”(Lee 272).

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Hansberry explores this idea at length as Walter talks how an increase in cash flow would benefit him. Obsessed with his dream, Walter tells his Mama “[money] if life!” When this life dream comes crashing down, Walter finds himself tempted to accept a white man’s bride instead of standing up for his pride and his family. Perhaps his ideals changed; or perhaps he realized his dream was only a fantasy; or perhaps he truly thought that this was the best decision for his family. However, when decisions making time comes, Mama pulls Travis aside, telling him to ask Walter what the five generations before him had come to do.

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They had to stay in the kitchen just because their skin tone was different. Douglas viewed this as irrational. Hearing the disrespect people of color were receiving will persuade the audience to make a change. A young African American woman was in church and she decided to “partake of the same sacramental elements with the others'' conversely, “when the

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As a direct result of this belief, she feels hatred towards Tea Cake because he is a common black man, and tries to convince Janie to leave him for her brother. Through this, Hurston puts forth Tea Cake’s experience of discrimination based on his race as a microcosmic example of what takes place in American society. Part of Mrs. Turner’s views come from the fact that “it was distressing to emerge from her inner temple and find these black desecrators howling with laughter before the door” (145). For her, black people are too rambunctious and too foolish; she fails to recognize that the black people she knows simply have a different way of life than her, and, as a result, becomes prejudiced. Hurston demonstrates that racist whites like Mrs. Turner meet a few black people, decide that they are too loud, careless, or whatever trait they dislike, and characterize the entire race based on the traits of these few people.

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In the play Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry takes place on the southside of Chicago where Walter and his family are racially profiled and show us how the survive throughout their struggles. The central struggles for the younger family in their search for the American dream is mostly poverty and being racially profiled against for their actions. Hansberry challenges the traditional gender roles and issues of dominance throughout the play when Mama gives Walter lee the rest of the money at the end of the play. He becomes all excited and was supposed to save some for himself and put the rest of the money to Beneatha 's education. Instead, he gave all that money to Willy another character in the play which later on that he stole from him.

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Specifically, Hansberry addresses the issue of generational differences between Benny and Mama. Mama’s style of life was tremendously different from Benny in many ways, as she has an old school mentality. For example Mama believes that the world revolves around God as He decides everyones faith. Mama’s remarks describe her beliefs the best as she says to

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The author’s plays theorize constructive models of "universal" femininity. The some of the critics label “A Raisin in the Sun” as an "American classic" either because of its American-ness or because of its African American-ness. I believe that the play was considered an American classic because Lorraine Hansberry brought light to the everyday struggles that African Americans suffered due to their race. In the past, many African Americans wanted better future; consequently, they were profited by some Caucasians due to

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“Mother to Son” she later retitled it as “A Raisin in the Sun”. Hansberry was an atheist and she believed that gaining civil rights in the United States and obtaining independence in colonial Africa were two sides of the same coin that presented similar challenges for Africans on both

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( Hansberry 74). Walter always dreamed of having a successful business and being able to provide for his family. However, he could not achieve that as easily, just because of his skin color. No matter how hard he worked, he was never given equal opportunities as someone who was white. Consequently, African Americans being seen as less than white people left them struggling to achieve their

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Hansberry’s drama draws on her own experiences growing up in segregated Chicago, for example, redlining was often used in Chicago to discriminate against [colored people] who were moving into new neighborhoods. “Redlining is the practice of denying key services (like home loans and insurance) or increasing their costs for residents in a defined geographical area... It was almost exclusively a tool to force blacks (and other minorities) into particular geographic areas. ”(Jamelle Bouie, How We Built the Ghettos, page 1). This ties to Hansberry’s play, a Raisin in the Sun, by the Younger family lived in a very cramped and poor area.

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Racial Discrimination has always been a problem in our country. There are two kinds of racism: one, which could be easily seen and understood, and other being unclear or hidden, which is hard for a person to recognize most of the times. Even though both are dangerous in different ways, latter is the most dangerous among them. In “Raisin in the Sun”, Mr. Lindner is a character which applies such form of racism to meet his motive of not letting the African-American family move into his white neighborhood. Through Mr. Lindner’s visit to the Younger’s family, A Raisin in the Sun demonstrates racially segregated nature of Chicago’s neighborhood and the non-violent tactics used by Mr. Lindner to racially segregate the African-American family from other white people in his community.

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The worst that she was treated, the more she wanted to change the system. Because Johnson used to work on the other side of the premises, there were no black bathrooms on the side she worked on. If she had to go to the bathroom, she had to walk a mile just to go and be back on time, even if it was raining. When she went to take her seat many walked away from her and wouldn’t sit around or by her. She wasn’t even allowed to do the things that the whites could.

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A Raisin in the Sun "Education has spoiled many a good plow hand" (Hansberry 103). This quote is significant because it is applying that education is better than being a hard-worker. A Raisin in the Sun, written by Lorraine Hansberry, is taken place in South Side, Chicago between World War II and the present. The main focus of this play is about a poor African-American family who has a chance to escape this lifestyle with a ten-thousand-dollar life insurance check, but is not desired to live in a "white" neighborhood.

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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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Just within the recent decades, men and women started to fight against the gender stereotypes and started to challenge their roles in a family and in the society. The play, A Raisin in the Sun, portrays the lives of African–Americans during the 1950s. Lorraine Hansberry, a writer and a social activist, reinforced the traditional gender roles, especially female’s, by depicting how the Youngers interact and how they act in an economical struggle. Throughout the play, A Raisin in the Sun, she uses Walter Lee Younger, Ruth Younger and Lena Younger to reinforce the traditional role of fathers, wives and mothers within a family.

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