Examples Of Dehumanization In Black Boy

Racism is one of the main subthemes that is evident throughout the book. The treatment of the African American race showed how the White race felt about the African Americans. The Whites were afraid their “blackness” would rub off on them. An example of this behavior in the book was when Hilly says, “ It’s just plain dangerous. Everybody knows they carry different kinds of diseases than we do” (Stockett,10).

In the book “Black Like Me” by Howard Griffin, a journalist goes through the times of the 1950s where blacks were not treated equally. In this book Griffin turns himself black with chemicals prescribed by a doctor and lives the life of a negro. He then leaves his family, and starts his journal accounts of his negro life. In this book Griffin changes his perspective of how negroes really were, despite what he learned from others. During his journey he faced many hardships, sufferings, and inequalities.

In The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, the narrator, James Weldon Johnson, makes the decision to live life disguised as a white man after seeing and experiencing the troubles that hound the African-Americans after the abolition of slavery. In Lalita Tademy’s Cane River, a slave family struggles to survive through their enslavement and the aftermaths of the Emancipation Proclamation. Throughout both of these stories, white people are disrespectful to the black people despite them deserving respect. Occasionally, this disrespect festers and turns into unjustified hatred. Through the gloom of death in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Cane River, one can see how prejudice is devastating to everything that stands in its path.

Have you ever wondered how life was in the past, or how people were treated? In the book Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin, Griffin experiences what it is like to be a black man in the south for six weeks. One critique of the book is, even though Griffin spent six weeks as a Negro, he will never fully empathize with the black race. I totally disagree with this statement because of how Griffin was treated/discriminated. Griffin was treated terribly, and I will tell you why.

In this quote, Wright uses the language of superiority and inferiority to show racism. The contrast that Wright makes between the "white folks" who act as if they are superior and the "black folks" who acknowledge their inferiority shows the ways in which racism can divide people into categories of "us" and "them". Using diction, Wright allows readers to understand the ways that racism continues systems of oppression and inequalities in society. This quote furthers the central idea that it is a struggle to find oneself in a world of racism by highlighting the pressure that racism puts on people to conform to its expectations. Later in the text, Wright uses diction when he says "The white people of the South had created a system of oppression so rigid, so all-encompassing, that it touched every aspect of life" (Wright 25).

He is often frustrated that he cannot do more to fight back against the cruelty of white southern society. However, since he maintains his confidence, Richard’s perspective is markedly different from the roles that both Black

(Wright 15) Richard is also seen as not worthy by his father because he's just a boy, with his dad telling him things like “Get out of my eyes before I smack you down”. (Wright 12) Also seen as not worthy by white people since he's black. This resulted in Richard being used by white people for entertainment in bars with Richard saying “I took a sip and coughed, the men and women laughed. The entire crowd in the saloon gathered about me.” (Wright 20)

Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin highlights the past racism, segregation and hatred of colored individuals. This autobiographical memoir is written in a diary-like style, which contributes to capturing the reader’s attention. This is because it enables to reader to connect with the narrator’s personal experiences. It accounts in detail about how colored individuals suffered greatly from constant racism during this time-period. This book depicts the main character, John Griffin, casting off his white identity and transforming himself into a black man.

The father is described as having “direct, animalistic impulses” (Wright 51), that “Joy was as unknown to him as was despair” (Wright 51). These descriptions characterize Richard’s father as having little emotion, which is implied to have been a result of the way he was treated by his landowners, shown by Wright stating “From the white landowners above him there had not been handed to him a chance to learn the meaning of loyalty, of sentiment, of tradition”. To Richard, his father has been altered by the society around him, conditioned to work for those above him without issue. Characterization allows the reader to understand the personality of Richard’s father without ever meeting him, without ever using

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?”

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.

Richard has always felt the unjust of race, and has felt how segregation made it hard for him to have a future. But when he gets a chance to get revenge on the whites, he refuses when he thinks ”Who wanted to look them straight in the face, who wanted to walk and act like a man.(200)” Stealing went against his morals of the right way to succeed and would not help the community appearance to the whites. The community as a whole is very religous but Richard does not share these beliefs, even with the persistence of his friends and family he says ”Mama, I don't feel a thing.(155)” This caused his friends to beg him, but in face of rejection they leave him alone.

Racial segregation affected many lives in a negative way during the 1900s. Black children had it especially hard because growing up was difficult to adapting to whites and the way they want them to act. In Black Boy, Richard Wright shows his struggles with his own identity because discrimination strips him of being the man he wants to be. Richard undergoes many changes as an individual because of the experience he has growing up in the south and learning how to act around whites.

In the memoir “The Black Boy” by Richard Wright, it tells a story in first person view of a young six-year-old boy who lives his life during the Jim Crow time period. The memoir tells a story of young Richard growing up in the south, living with his family he experienced many struggles growing up, beaten and yelled at by his family; his mom, grandmother, employer/employees and the kids at school. He would try his best to learn what he considered acceptable to the society and what is not. Due to his race, skin color, and the time period, he struggles to fit in with the people around him, and all he wish he could do is for everyone around to accept who he is. Wright tries to convey this theme that Richard tries to join the society on his

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).