Summary Of Racism In Richard Wright's Black Boy

Racism has been an important issue throughout history, especially in the United States, where after many struggles, civil rights were finally achieved. Though the key to understanding the segregation that happened is by looking at past from different perspectives. In, Black Boy by Richard Wright is autobiography story is about his experiences growing up as an African American in the segregated South. While, Separated Pasts by Melton A. McLaurin is an autobiography story about him growing up in a town called Wade, as a white who formed relationships with blacks. Through Melton and Richard personal experience of segregation in the South from opposite sides, they were able to find their own understanding of race and identity. The setting

The stone buildings and the concrete pavements looked bleak and hostile to me. The absence of green, growing things made the city seem dead” (Wright 27). The mention of the lack of plants simply implies that the typical Black family were poor, as the color of green symbolizes wealth and prosperity that only the whites have at that time. This is similar to Melton’s experience living as a white family in hometown of Wade where he point out that, “Only the “better” homes of the village had lawns, not the smooth green lawns of Better Homes and Gardens but lawns of several grasses and a variety of weeds, with the greenish-brown hue of army camouflage” (McLaurin 10). Melton observation like Richard convey the message that presence of green represent the wealth of the home owner. Here again Richard uses the word “bleak” to describe the black life, “Whenever I thought of the essential bleakness of black life in America, I knew that Negroes had never been allowed to catch the full spirit of Western civilization, that they lived somehow in it but not of it” (Wright 63). Richard questions the role of the blacks in fitting with the whites and the use of

During my visit at Granny’s a sense of the two races had been born in me with a sharp concreteness that would never die until I died “(Wright 75). This significant because this basically is his first personal experience involving segregation when sees two lines of people separating black and white. When Richard mentions of the concreteness it would be assume that this experience at the Arkansas railroad station is always apart of his memory, this is the first time physically see what is happening. Melton notices different behaviors that blacks had to do compared to whites,” Blacks who had to enter our house, for whatever reason, came in the back door. Unless employed as domestic servants, blacks conducted business with my father or mother on the back porch or, on rare occasions, in the kitchen” (McLaurin 13). This shows that Melton he questioned the way blacks acted and learned as a white, society at that time indirectly send the message that whites were superior. Likewise, Richard even as a black were taught to looked down to a certain group of people, All of us black people who lived in the neighborhood hated Jews, not because they