Black People For Example example essay topic

Racism is one of the main themes of Black Boy. Throughout the story we can see how black people lived and suffered, just for being different. They were treated as animals and humiliated by people. They didn't have rights and had to support the injustices of life at that period of time.

Since little, Richard knew but didn't understand that white people were different to black people, he thought that they were the same but still knew that white people were more powerful than black people, for example when he said in page 23: " And when a word circulated among the black people of the neighborhood that a black boy had been severe beaten by a white man, I felt that the white man had the right to beat the black boy. Richard refer to the black person as a boy, and to the white person as a man, by this difference we can see that he wasn't really concerned about the differences between whites and blacks, but he knew in a very innocence way that white men were more powerful than black men. As time goes by Richard realizes that many of the hardships of his life, such as poverty, hunger and lack of education, were the results of racial discrimination. Another example of racism is shown in chapter eight, when a black man, who was a classmate of Richard's brother, was killed by whites for visiting a white prostitute. This event made Richard realized how afraid he was of the white terror that could assault him at any time, and so he had to be very careful in whatever he did so that he would not be killed by whites. However black people were always in danger from whites.

One of the main problems that Richard had was that he treated white men as his equals. In chapter nine Richard was beaten with a whiskey bottle by some white boys whom he forgets to called them " sir". This also happened in the same chapter when a white man offered him a ride into town but he beated Richard because he forgets to called him "sir". This clearly show us that white men had the right to beated and killed black people if they wanted to. We can also see that Richard did not want to accept the superiority of white people, and that he have not learn how to live as a black man in the South, he should hide his true feelings and act different in front of white people, and also he has to think before he speaks to whites.

Another example or racial discriminations related to humiliation is shown in chapter twelve when a black worker called Shorty earned money by being a clown and by humiliating himself, in order to make whites laugh, and give him some coins. For example one day he asks a white man for a quarter and in return lets the man kick him in the pants. To Richard this event was disgusting, but other black workers cared more about bread than about dignity. The last example of racism is related with education.

In Chapter thirteen Richard is interested in reading a book from H. L Mencken, but black people wasn't allowed to borrow books from the public library and so he asked a catholic man, if he could borrow his card and he accepted. Not letting black people to read books from the public library was unfair, people should always have the right to learn, but obviously black men were consider as people with no intelligence, and also very few wanted to improve their situation, they were only interested in survival.