Black Boy by Richard Wright

English Language and literature
WT 2
Lamin B Touray
Year12

Black Boy – Oppression

We’ve read a few books in class and I chose this book to express the types of oppressions used to portray racism among the people. Richard Wright, (1908-1960) the author of the book, wrote the book as an autobiographical novel in the 1940s. Richard wrote the book to express racism in his life and how it affected black people in America in those days. You could say he was very outspoken and brutally honest about it. As he writes about his life experience from childhood to adulthood, you can feel the intense pressure and uncomfortable life he was living. In a world full of hatred and disrespect for fellow humans, less human value for other races. Richard, in his story, managed to overcome the obstacles he faced while growing up as a youth in the Deep South. In this task, I’ll talk about his life and the racism he faced and how he dealt with them, and also how it influenced his life to making him a better person that he later succeeded to become. I’ll also show how black people in general were affected by racist act and behaviors.

Richard overcame racial oppression by becoming defiant and resistant to the common roles issued to the black society in the south. He grew up to becoming a man at a very young age because his father, a sharecropper deserted the family for another woman. Richard hanged out of bars, learned swear words and drank alcohol. At a very young age he became a drunkard. His mom punished him but still no success. He was then taken under the watch of an older black woman, who keeps a close eye on him and prevented him from drinking. Soon Richard lost his taste for alcohol. Richard slowly learns to read by going through Children’s book, and learned to count with the help of a very generous and benevolent deliveryman, who spent an hour teaching him the numbers from one to hundred and in no time Richard was counting unremittingly. Richard later had access to other books by using the library card of a very benevolent white coworker. He had many unyielding questions he asks himself but he couldn’t find a reliable person to discuss the issue with. He later vaguely understood the relationship between white and black in the south, which he considered very deceptive.

Richard had many job opportunities but couldn’t last long in any of them because of his self-confidence and believe. He is also very racially sensitive and wants to be treated equally. He always wanted more and strived to gain knowledge and further his secret studies. He rebelled against orthodox Christianity and capitalism. Richard was a very committed communist in America. He firmly believes that black people as any other race deserve to be treated equally. He was once quoted saying “Men can starve for lack of self-realization as much as they can from lack of bread”, which means if you don’t get to know your worth and yourself, you’re likely to suffer the same way as you can’t live without food. Richard’s success started at the age of 16 when he first published his short story. He wrote many other books like native son and Uncle Toms children. He portrayed white people as the enemies, painting them with hatred for other races.

Today everyone experiences some kind of oppression, whether be it cultural, racial or sexual harassment. Richard encountered societal oppression, one example is when he sees a “black” boy being whipped by a “white” guy, and he wonders why and asks his mother. His mother says, “The “white” man didn’t whip the “black” boy … He beat the “black” boy”. This quote is firmly portraying racism and white power and authority over the black society. This makes the black people in the south feel as if they belong to the lower class. Another very unpleasant situation was when he is at the rail road station with his mother, he sees something that didn’t amaze him at all, something he has never seen before, “…for the first time I noticed that there were two lines of people at the ticket window, a “white” line and a “black” line”. This is demonstrating how laws keep a certain group of people separated, more specifically black people, which is another type of society oppression.

Racial oppression even today is an issue in our modern globalised world, although there have been major changes. There are some things that can never change about racism. People use words like black to refer to dark and negative things whiles they use white to refer to light and positive things. There are a lot of people still racially abused and treated unequally because of their skin tone and others are oppressed because of their sexual preferences. All these are things that can be changed gradually in the future. Although, sometimes it seems as if racism gets worst by the day.