Becoming Evil

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Recommended: Racism in academic literature

We are born clean, with the best of the feelings "love," watching with a look of illusion, eventful life. Over time the society, culture and our own experiences pollute our life, influencing the way we think. In the short story “Going to Meet the Man” by James Baldwin, tells the story of Jesses an impotent white sheriff, whose one night his arousal awakened when he remembered the day his father took him to watch the torture and murder of a black man, at the age of eight. “Going to Meet the Man” demonstrates how humans are not born racist and evil, but it behavior and thought develops after significant childhood events. Jesses was an evil man, full of loathing and disgust against the blacks, but Jesses had not always felt that aversion for black. He used to have a black friend, Otis. When he commented the strange disappear of Otis, his father replied, “No, I reckon Otis’s folks was afraid to let him show himself this morning” (Baldwin, p. 1756) Jesses replied that Otis is too small to do something. When kids grow up, they learn the meaning of good and bad actions. As the father stat...

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