Essay/Term paper: Black boy

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Cliff Notes

In the book Black Boy, we see many black people in the south

dealing with many hardships. One



of the most prominent problems for blacks seemed to be the "Jim

Crow" laws. These laws withheld blacks



from society, breaking them apart from whites and making it very

hard for them to live an even close to



normal life. Black people couldn"t express their own ideas at all.

They had to call all white men "sirs" and



all white women "ma"am". They couldn"t act the slightest bit

superior to whites. It was almost impossible



for black people to make a decent living in the south, and they also

had to take the abuse dealt to them by



he whites without even attempting ant resistance. Blacks in the

south also had to deal with the separation



aspects of the "Jim crow" laws. They had to sit in the back of the

buses, they had to use separate water



fountains and bathrooms, they were looked upon almost like they

had some sort of disease. These are just a



few of the "Jim Crow" laws that the black people had to deal with.



Richard was not the only one in this book dealing with racism. All

the people around him were



also coping with it also, friends co-workers and family had to face

the challenges of a racist environment.



Throughout the book we see these other people dealing with the

problems of an extremely racist society.



We also see how each person in Richards life deals with it

differently. There are a few people and insience



that stick out in my mind especially. The first one would have to be

an incident with Shorty. Shorty has



dealt with racism his whole life, and he has learned to deal with it as

he has grown. We see a great example



of how Shorty deals on page 269Shorty is faced with the problem of

no money, such as many other



southern blacks were, and we see that he is willing to do anything

for any amount of money.



" You can kick me in the ass for a quarter" (269,wright) As this

happens Richard witnesses the



whole thing and we can see that he is very disappointed in the way

Shorty dealt with the situation. He can"t



understand how he can put himself in that kind of degrading

position, and Shorty simply answers.



" But a quarter can"t pay for what he did to you!"



But we can see Shorty thinks differently.



Another example of a person that dealt differently with the Racism

around him was Uncle Hoskins. He was



a man just trying to make his own in this world. Minding his own

business, trying to run his own business



so he could support his family. We see that he owes some money to

some white people, it seems to play a



part at the time of his killing, but if you look deeper you see that the

most significant reason for him being



lynched was that he was a somewhat successful black man, and the

white people didn"t like that. Uncle



Hoskins is just a black man who tried hard to mind his own

business, and that was his way of dealing with



the hardships he was faced with, but we know that no matter how he

dealt with it he was never going to be



left alone because he was a somewhat successful black man, and

that just wasn"t acceptable.



One final example is his family. Like his mother, and his

grandmother. We don"t really see many



big incidences of them dealing with racism. We mostly just see how

hard it is for them to get by in life.



They don"t have a lot of money, no medical care and at a few points

we even see them having to neglect



Richard and his brother. It wasn"t totally their decision though

because it was just to hard to raise children



in that situation. They just had to deal with it by taking it one day at

a time, and their really wasn"t much



they could do.



Richard has had to deal with many racist situations. We see that he

doesn"t really deal well with



being treated inferior to whites. One incident that Richard was

treated racistly was when he was shopping



in a convenience store in a white neighborhood, and as soon as he

exited the store he was approached by



the police. He was forced to the ground and cuffed. In the end we

know he got off but he was told not to



walk in white neighborhood at night. This was one situation where

Richard was not treated to badly, but we



still know he was not treated like a white person and he didn"t like it

at all. He didn"t appreciate being



called boy, and having to call the white men "sirs". He also didn"t

appreciate being blamed for a crime that



he didn"t commit.



Another incident that Richard was treated racistly, was when

Richard was working in the brick



yard and he was bit by the owners dog. He was later fired because

he complained to the boss, and though



the boss didn"t directly say he was firing him because he was black

or complaining we knew it because he



said to Richard that he was basically lying about the pain because

dog bites don"t hurt black skin. By this



point in the book Richard learns to deal better with racism, but he

still has attitude about being treated



differently then the white kids or adults.



One final incident the Richard had to deal with was when he was

working at the hotel. This



incident didn"t completely have to deal with him but he got

involved. When the door man at the hotel



slapped his black girl friend in the ass as they were walking out of

the hotel, Richard got pretty upset that



he did that considering that the doorman was white. It was like he

couldn"t understand how white people



didn"t like blacks, but yet the would use such sexual connotations

towards the black women, We see



Richard react, as he stops and just looks at the doorman. After

Richard decides not react violently, and got



somewhat of a threat from the doorman when he just continued.

This was Richards way of "scaring" the



white man without starting something physical. We see Richards

way of dealing with the racism change



throughout the book. When he is younger we see how he can"t help

but get defensive, and as he gets older



he learns to control himself better.