Monday, March 10, 2008

The Ethics of Living Jim Crow by Wright

The main focus of the article The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch by Richard Wright was to show how black citizen were treated in day-to-day situations when racial discrimination was severe in the United States. It started out by Wright first giving his experience of how he learned to be subordinate to white people. He had gotten in a fight with white children and him mother said that he deserved to be beat by them because they had power over them though jobs, food, shelter, etc. From there is talked about his experience as a young adult and the various types of jobs he held. He started out by thinking that he could advance and learn knew things, but after being fired and abused he realized that he must live two different personalities in order to hold a job and survive. He also learned that he couldn’t trust a white man to help him, for example when someone popped his bike tire. The white boys threw a bottle at him simple because he did not call them ‘sir’. Throughout the article, the author was trying to show that many blacks accepted the treatment that they received by the white population and always seemed glad that they didn’t get treated worse. I didn’t really have any questions about the article, but I found it very interesting. I truly liked how there was quick short personal stories that kept my attention. When the author ended the article by talking about him being able to read books, I thought that was uplifting and showed hope for their future.

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