Discrimination In William Blake's The Little Black Boy

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Over the years, the notion of discrimination has evolved. In the modern world, it has become more implicit, however, in the early 18th-century discrimination in the form of slavery and racism was evident. Though most people accepted this act, there were some who opposed it. William Blake, a former poet rejected the idea of hierarchy and supported equality. Blake believed that black people were not inferior to white people and treating someone on the basis of his skin colour is ignorance. The essay will look at how Blake’s view is represented in the poem “The Little Black Boy” which is derived from the Songs of Innocence and Experience.
“The Little Black Boy” was inspired by an account of slavery in Suriname. Suriname was an area ruled by the Europeans after the first Indians went away. The Europeans had several plantations, they used African slaves to work on the plantations and treated them inhumanely. Blake wrote “The Little Black Boy” in an attempt to convey his readers that such behaviour is immoral and should be forbidden.
The title of the poem implicitly suggests how the life of …show more content…

He disapproved the use of black slaves as he believed that it was immoral to exploit people on the basis of their appearance. Blake was an advanced and modern thinker who did not accept the typical Christian point of view. When we dwell deeper in the poem we realize that it also depicts colonialism, Blake wrote this poem at a time when slavery was persisting in London and many black people were working for English aristocrat families. It wouldn 't be wrong to say that the boy and his mother were also taken away from the “southern wild” presumably Africa to England and the whole poem revolves around their life in England. Blake’s motivation to write this poem was to create awareness among people that they should condemn such activities. He wanted to eliminate the mental block which was persisting among people in the

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