Black Boy 1181Wright’s racial awareness develops. Aboard a train
for Arkansas, he notices that there are separate car-
riages for white and black people, leading to a flurry
of innocent questions to his mother about race and
identity. Is Granny white? Do white people accept
her as white? How is she able to live in a house filled
with colored people? Is it her marriage to Grandpa
(a visibly black man) which qualifies her as black?
Was Granny a slave? Despite his mother’s angry and
evasive answers, Wright begins to comprehend the
nature of racial division, and soon after, he grows
conscious of the implications of color for the very
survival of black people. In a formative moment,
he abandons his job as a paperboy when a cus-
tomer explains that the material he has been selling
preaches the doctrines of the Ku Klux Klan. At the
time, Wright had not heard of lynching as a “solu-
tion” to the “problem” of black people. On another
occasion, Wright learns that a black boy (his friend’s
brother) has been killed by a white group for alleg-
edly visiting a white prostitute.
The most searing details of race relations in Black
Boy, however, emerge from the various employments
which brings Wright directly into contact with
white people. In one job, when, despite his raging
hunger, he refuses to eat a disgusting meal presented
to him by his employer, Wright is told that “niggers”
have got above their stations. In another, he works as
a porter in a clothing store whose owner treats black
customers with open contempt. The fact that this
owner has sold items to these customers on credit is
doubly significant in Wright’s adult consciousness as
an act that links racial hatred to capitalistic exploita-
tion. In yet another job, Wright works in a clothing
store where the boss and his son violently beat a
black woman. And in still another, he is forced to
quit his job at an optical company where the thug-
gish employees, Reynolds and Pease, find his desire
for job progression utterly intolerable. Wright notes
that his self-esteem all but dissolved in the wake of
this episode, echoing the alienation experienced
by Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of his novel
native Son.
Black Boy, however, is not only a record of race
prejudice but an exploration of the terrible psychol-
ogy that can underpin it. At another optical com-
pany, white employees tell Wright that Harrison
(a black boy who works across the street) is baying
for his blood; they hope to draw the pair into a
brutal fight, having told Harrison a similar fiction.
Although Wright and Harrison realize that they
are the subjects of a plot, eventually they are drawn
into a shameful fight for money. The episode is one
of Wright’s numerous experiences of sadistic racial
prejudice. Another vivid example is when a group
of white men bait him into accepting a lift, only
to throw him back to the street in an explosion of
violence and death threats. In no uncertain terms,
these stories show how race prejudice puts Wright’s
very life at risk, and why, as an adult, he came to
perceive hatred toward black people as “woven into
the texture of things.” Wright also feels a grave sense
of injustice about the effects of this situation on his
family. His grandfather, a soldier in the Civil War,
was effectively denied his disability pension, further
entrenching the family in poverty.
Wright’s personal perspective on race is clear. He
never accepts subservience in the face of white hos-
tility, learning in the end to mount his fight against
prejudice by becoming a writer. He finds the antics
of people such as Shorty—an elevator operator who
degrades himself by encouraging white men to kick
him “for a quarter”—totally appalling. In its specific
moments, Black Boy is therefore a dreadful record of
U.S. race relations, while in its totality, it stands as a
burning indictment of race prejudice.
Kaleem AshrafreLIGIon in Black Boy
Richard Wright’s inability to “feel God” from a
young age inspired a series of turbulent relationships
with the deeply religious adults in his family. Much
of Black Boy therefore explores the use of religion as
a tool for coercion, control, and domination.
Wright endures a particularly strained relation-
ship with his grandmother, an ardent member of the
Seventh Day Adventist Church. Granny enforces a
tough religious regime involving Bible verses read by
all members of the family and prayers at breakfast,
dinner, dawn, and dusk. As the eldest member of
her church, Granny insists on taking young Rich-
ard to her “all night ritualistic prayer meetings.”
These quickly exhaust the boy’s stamina, and he
often seeks permission to take naps until sunrise. In