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Prejudice And Racial Discrimination In Richard Wright's Black Boy

868 Words4 Pages

Black Boy Have you ever faced racial discrimination? Has your life been threatened because of the color of your skin? While cases of this do still happen, they are far less common than the racial discrimination and threats found in the early 1900’s South, the setting of Black Boy by Richard Wright. The Autobiography depicts Wright's life up until 1937 and his struggles growing up in the American South. Wright’s narrative includes several scenes of brutality against him, and others of his race, and how they change his mindset and daily interactions. He has endured many instances of hate and brutality, and they have all changed who he is. Wright wishes to see the end of all the brutality and hate against his kind, as they grow up into feeling …show more content…

you learn how to be obedient and respectful to whites, to always use sir or madam, how to control your feelings and not let them show. Due to his turbulent childhood, Wright did not learn these skills. After a summer of being unable to hold a job, a friend of his, Griggs, decides to speak to him. Griggs tells him ““Then start acting like [a slave],” he hammered at me, pounding his fist in his palm. “When you’re in front of white people, think before you act, think before you speak. Your way of doing things is all right among our people, but not for white people. They won’t stand for it”” (Wright 184). In the South, the hate and brutality they face have conditioned blacks to act a certain way or they will become the focus of that hate and brutality. They must choose every word and action carefully, lest they are beaten or lynched. Wright tries to adapt and accept this but is having difficulty with it, as he doesn’t feel natural, human, acting this way. This is a clear example of the problem with the discrimination in the South. The whites treat them as subhuman, and to survive they become subhuman. Wright eventually learns and lands a job at an optical

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Richard Wrights memoir Black Boy teaches it's readers about how living in the America was set up.most importantly it teaches how badly black people were treated. Wright was mistreated just because he was a young black boy living in the south. In the memoir Black Boy Richard was trying to tell his reader how bad racism was back when he was a kid. Back in the 1900's Wright also used pathos to show how his emotions were toward racism.

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