Class discussion covered a broad range of societal issues that are brought to light in Black Boy. One of the overarching issues was Wright’s portrayal of the system of oppression created by southern whites toward the black community. Professor Rodrigues made a point that particularly caught my attention and that was the economic system of power that was in place. I think looking at the economic status of the black community that Richard is a part of at this time is particularly important in understanding this system of oppression.
In this society, black people are not allowed to rise up the economic ladder. One of the key beliefs in the “American Dream” is the idea that anyone can move up economically in life. We see that this is not true for blacks in the south in this era. They are held at low level jobs because whites know that elevated economic status leads to societal power. That’s why the two men run Richard out of the eye glass making shop. Black people in that community are forced to fight among themselves for low level jobs, barely making enough to get buy. This economic status is intentionally created by the white oppressors.
Based on the book so far I can also see your point that whites suppress blacks at low level jobs because they know elevated economic status leads to social power. I think that Wright it starting to understand the detrimental effects of a system such as this. The lack of opportunities is not something he accepts but he knows that he will not get a high paying job because that is what all the whites have taken. Whites still believe that a black person will not have the intellect necessary for such jobs. Hopefully, Wright will be the one to prove them wrong.
I agree that it is very important to recognize the systems of oppression in place during Wright’s era. This provides better insight into Wright and his family’s actions at the time, as well as in to Wright’s later reflections as he writes the story. What he chooses to include and how he portrays it to the reader could be influenced by any number of things, but I think it is important to consider how his thoughts on the system of oppression are seen in the text.
I think that this is definitely a good observation. So often, people who don’t believe in the existence of institutional racial oppression will disregard it as simply “economic issues.” But I think Wright’s point is that you can’t distinguish between the two–they are intrinsically related through the engineering of the economic system to intentionally and explicitly negatively affect people of color.
I think Wright’s casting of how his economic disenfranchisement lead to his needing to steal and cheat people when he worked as an insurance agent, and how both of those things made him feel corrupted and unclean, kind of like how he felt when he had to go beg for money from his dad, that impoverishment economically leads to the degradation of the finer feelings, and moral sensitivities, was pretty interesting. And also how hunger was cast as his central struggle with impoverishment created a profound link between poverty’s toll on the soul and the corporeal body. But why as a Marxist he made his critique of economic imbalance so indirectly is hard to understand.