Introduction
Even the way I was introduced to Black Boy by Richard Wright would affirm my later disposition of the world I lived in. I was introduced to the novel through a short story version that my eleventh-grade class read together. This short story was of the part of Black Boy in which Richard, at age nine, is hanging out outside of the local saloon and being offered liquor by the patrons and being paid to say expletives that a child should never say. As a class, we read this story, did a quick analysis, and moved on; however, this story meant so much more to me. It was the first time I was able to read a story in school in which the protagonist was a Black boy like me. Even though the excerpt was in my opinion, an irresponsible representation of the plot and meaning of the entire book, as well as perpetuating the idea that Black people and especially children are especially irresponsible, it sparked my interest. I wrote my research paper that year on Black Boy. What I learned, especially in that first reading of Richard Wright’s novel, was that this book would affirm my identity like no other piece of literature ever had.
Identity is the most crucial aspect of human life. Without knowing who we are, we cannot interact with the world or its other inhabitants as our most genuine selves. Until we figure out what it is that shapes our identity and who we are as individuals, we are playing a role that was handed to us by the society in which we were born. In this essay, I intend to show and prove the benefits of reading canonical texts at multiple points through one’s life if those canonical texts speak to the experiences of the reader. Using autoethnography and reader response, I intend to show this through my own experiences with Richard Wright’s Black Boy.
There is no novel that I can give more credit to for whom I have become as a Black man than Black Boy by Richard Wright. I read Black Boy for the first time in the eleventh grade, at age sixteen, and it shook up my entire world. I read Black Boy two additional times when I was twenty-three and twenty-seven years old, and both times, the book had the same effect. In his work, “Black Boy Revisited: Richard Wright’s Harbingers of Transracial Worldview,” English professor at Kent State University, Mamoun Alzoubi states, “Black Boy functions as a political involvement to help make the invisible visible. It denaturalizes the social and points up its historicity.” (Alzoubi 179) The first time I read Black Boy, it did just that. It made me feel visible. Before reading the book, I was convinced that my experiences would never be validated by canonical reading. I had read The Catcher in The Rye and Of Mice and Men, but neither had any effect on me. I read those from afar, and the experiences of the protagonist in those novels couldn’t have been any further from my own. As a Black boy raised in the predominantly white Stoughton, Massachusetts, I felt and had been validated by the curriculum that my Black experience didn’t belong in the classroom and perhaps, it was something best kept to me personally. Then Black Boy came along and showed me that there was a crime being committed upon me and that it was not by any particular individual or group of individuals. This crime was being perpetrated by the system and society in which I was born that would continue to try and convince me that my experiences were illegitimate at every step of my development. It would also, without blatantly saying so but through numerous insinuations, tell me that I should appreciate the fact that I am not living a lower middle class or poor experience like the vast majority of my race. Legendary poet and activist Amiri Baraka once said “Wright was one of the people that made me conscious of the need to struggle.” (Sherman) Wright also taught me about that need. Throughout my multiple readings of Black Boy, my understanding of that need to struggle shifted as I further understood Wright’s journey as I experienced similar circumstances in my own life.
As I did when I first read Black Boy, seeing oneself reflected through canonical literature can provide an energizing experience for marginalized students that no amount of mentor programs of tokenism can bring. My world shook when I read Black Boy because when reading Richard’s story and his innermost thoughts, it felt as if there I was. Richard’s logic made sense to me in so many ways, and being able to defend it with my classmates, I was able to shield my ideology and my experiences in a way that no other class discussion previously had given me the chance to do. Being a young Black man with goals that exceeded anything the people around you had ever seen before is tough position to be in given the glass ceiling our race is often subjected to. The seed that the book planted allowed me to revisit the novel after I finished college, and in that reading, I was able to make sense of my young adult experience dealing with the workforce and finally being out on my own. Four years later, at age twenty-seven, I found time to read Black Boy for the third time and in that reading grew a complete understanding of Wright’s Marxist beliefs that only years in toiling in multiple entry-level positions can bring. These three readings, all happening at the perfect time in my life, allowed me to understand both Richard Wright and myself fully.
The benefits of diverse canonical reading do not only lie with marginalized communities; however white students also have an immense amount to gain; especially as critical race theory is not introduced in the school curriculum. As Wright writes in Black Boy:
“It was in the psychological distance that separated the races that the deepest meaning of the problem of the Negro lay for me. For these poor, ignorant white girls to have understood my life would have meant nothing short of a vast revolution in theirs. And I was convinced that what they needed to make them complete and grown-up in their living, was the inclusion in their personalities of a knowledge of lives such as I lived and suffered containedly.” (Wright 303)
To be able to understand the lives of your peers through diverse canonical reading is beneficial to the society as a whole as each individual broadens their scope of what exactly life consists of. Currently, white students are led to believe that their narrative is and should be the dominant narrative in this country by readings in classrooms mostly being about their American experience. This inversely cultivates an inferiority complex in the minds of non-white students as they are led to feel that their experiences are not vital or worth mentioning.
In “Richard Wright: The Problem of Self-Identification,” Tamara Denissova writes that “Any situation in which an individual is supposed to abide by the canons established by somebody else, and not be guided by his judgment, is unacceptable for one in search of identity.” (Denissova 10) Had my identity been rooted in what I had read and learned before I was handed a copy of Black Boy, I would be insecure and confused about both my place and the place of Black people in American society. In a debate with William F. Buckley at the Oxford Union about whether the American Dream had been achieved at the expense of the American Negro, James Baldwin once said, “In the case of the American Negro, born in that glittering republic. And in the moment you are born, since you don’t know any better, every stick and stone, and every face is white, and since you have not yet seen a mirror, you suppose that you are too. It comes as a great shock, around the age of five, or six, or seven, to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, has not pledged allegiance to you.” (Baldwin) Wright affirmed for me the disconnect I felt with white society and rationalized it. I would understand that it was not me that inadequate but rather the standards I was being judged by and the rules I was convinced that I had to follow. As Wright writes in Black Boy, “I was feeling the very thing that the state of Mississippi had spent millions of dollars to make sure that I would never feel.” (Wright 148) Through purposefully excluding our history, the state of Massachusetts also spent a great deal of money to assure that my fellow Black male students and I, also thought little of ourselves and our race but thanks to the seeds planted in me from Black Boy, the state would ultimately not get its wish.
I read Black Boy at three different points in my life at ages sixteen, twenty-three, and twenty-seven. As could be expected I was at completely different points in life and from each reading, I took away different lessons. As my understanding grew of life in America, especially life as a Black man, I related even more to Richard’s story and Black Boy continued to cultivate my consciousness of both Blackness and working-class life in America.
Section I: Age 16
The founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Richard Allen, made his sermons real to his fellow Blacks by sharing with them the Book of Exodus from the Christian Bible in a way that made them realize they were, like the Jewish people in the Bible, in an unholy bondage that they must be freed from. This allowed the slaves to realize their bondage was not unlike the bondage of the Jewish people in the Bible and that understanding made their lives and their struggle real. Similarly, reading Black Boy shaped my idea of Blackness because it validated my Black experience by showing me that I was not alone in it. Blackness was not a curse, but instead it was the victims of a curse and that curse was the journey we have endured through Western society. “"Whatever I thought of the essential bleakness of black life in America, I knew that Negroes had never been allowed to catch the full spirit of Western civilization, that they lived somehow in it but not of it" (Wright 33). When I first read Black Boy, what most resonated with me was the idea of lowered expectations because of one’s race. I had never realized that all of those around me had slowly built the glass ceiling above throughout my life. Unknowingly, my parents started the construction when they told me what I could not do because I was Black. Conversations about how I can expect to be treated by the police, or how I should make it clear that I did not steal anything to suspicious store managers, forced me to be hyper-aware of how others saw me. Teachers also played a role in this shaping as they would be shockingly surprised every single year by how well I did in English class. My eighth-grade teacher, Ms. Rondeau would underline these expectations when after I excelled in all of her class writing assignments, she still recommended me for (and I would be placed in) the slower-paced English class in the ninth grade. This was a smack in the face by the education system if I ever felt one. Even my friends played their part as when we were children and were talking about who we would be for Halloween and I would suggest my favorite superhero, Spiderman, I was met with a barrage of “But you’re Black! Spiderman isn’t Black!” They probably felt like they were stating a fact and that I should find another superhero to be, but they knew as well as I did that there were no popular Black superheroes. I had to be conscious of my Blackness because if I were not, it could mean either physical or emotional harm at any moment. I no longer saw myself, but I became who I felt I needed to become to fit in and get along in this society. As Alzoubi states “Social consciousness is predicated by various forces that determine what subjects ought to believe.” (Alzoubi 179)
James Baldwin once said, “To be a negro in this country, and to be relatively conscious, is to be in a rage almost constantly.” The moment I was handed back my eleventh-grade research paper on Black Boy, the consciousness that I gained from the novel would be put to use immediately. My teacher handed back all of the research papers and announced proudly that the best grade that was given out that year had come from that classroom. She announced that the highest graded research paper was my own. As my friends congratulated me, the over-achieving white girl who sat in front of me turned around and in a voice I will remember for the rest of my life said “You?!”. She was shocked that I could have gotten a better grade than she did on any assignment even though I was, and I knew this at the time, a far better writer than she was. Even though she put in a lot of effort, I enjoyed English class. She had areas in which she struggled; however, those areas came naturally to me, because I enjoyed the process. She took the paper off my desk and flipped through it as if she was going to prove that her paper was better. After having my paper for a few minutes, she slammed it back on my desk in frustration and sat through the rest of the class brewing in her perceived failure. In my mind then, and now, this moment was without a doubt racially motivated as she didn’t always get the best grade in class and she never reacted that way when one of the white students, even the ones who didn’t achieve high grades regularly, outdid her on an assignment. For some reason being behind me on an assignment (I should mention she performed worse more often than just that moment and never knew) infuriated her and I sat behind her, relishing in her dismay. The Black boy outdid her on this assignment, and there was nothing she could do about it.
The subtitle of Black Boy is American Hunger and that also meant a great deal to me. As Tamara Denissova writes “The feeling of hunger persists throughout the protagonist's childhood and adolescence. But physical hunger is superseded by an American spiritual hunger, a quest for one's self and one's place in life.” (Denissova 5) The hunger for more is and will be felt by all who are not given a full spectrum of the history and information they deserve. Like Wright, I had a hunger for information that the school system chose to ignore constantly. I wanted information about my experience and the history of my people. I was denied both, so when I read Wright’s curiosity in Black Boy, I felt that I was right in asking these questions and the answers he got were the exact same answers I was being given by Black authority figures. The most powerful racial moment to me in my first reading of Black Boy was without a doubt the moment that Richard asked his mother about the chain gang:
“’What’s a chain gang?’
‘It’s just what you see,’ she said. ‘A gang of men chained together and made to work.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they’ve done something wrong and they’re being punished.’
‘What did they do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But why do they look like that?’
‘That’s to keep them from running away,’ she said. ‘You see, everybody’ll know that they’re convicts because of their stripes.’
‘Why don’t the white men wear stripes?’
‘They’re the guards.’
‘Do white men ever wear stripes?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Did you ever see any?’
‘No.’
‘Why are there so many Black men wearing stripes?’
‘It’s because… Well, they’re harder on Black people.’
‘The white people?’
‘Yes.’ (Wright 52)
The idea that whites, in particular white men, have the right to be hard on Black men is something that didn’t sit right with me as it didn’t sit with Richard at that moment. White men built the societal structure that frequently hands verdicts of guilty to innocent Black men and drives the actually guilty Black men to commit the crimes in the first place. Of course, I realized there is room for accountability on the part of the individual but the pattern was so strikingly similar from the early 20th century in which Richard is speaking from to my everyday experience in the early 21st century, that I rationalized that there must be outside forced at play here. Through every aspect of society white men had built barriers for Blacks and these barriers extended even into the spiritual realm.
Religion has been often used as a crutch in the Black community when society does not provide one. As Khethzi S. Kerena writes, “Religion attracts Wright emotionally, but on an intellectual level he is unable to believe in God.” (Kerena 39) Wright felt that he did not need the crutch of religion because he felt that he already internally had the deep feeling of life that religion was offering:
“I would have been moved to complete acceptance, but the hymns and sermons of God came into my heart only long after my personality had been shaped and formed by uncharted conditions of life. I felt that I had in me a sense of living as deep as that which the church was trying to give me, and in the end I remained basically unaffected.” (Wright 98)
The Black Church has provided, since the days of slavery, a safe space for the Black people in America and this safe space became the home of meetings of all kinds. Through the Christian religion, Blacks were able to both see their suffering as divine, and decide their freedom was worth fighting for. Richard saw religion as merely a tool of the powerful over the powerless. A sentiment with which I agreed, “Wherever I found religion in my life I found strife, the attempt of one individual or group to rule another in the name of God. The naked will to power seemed always to walk in the wake of a hymn.” (Wright 119) With Richard’s non-acceptance of God, he was placed outside of his community and was shunned by everyone in his household except for this mother. Richard at first is bothered by this fact but soon becomes comfortable with it because he understands that he is searching for something that his relatives may never understand. Dennisova writes “The rigidity of the Seventh Day Adventists, the serenity of its prescriptions alienate the boy from this community as well. Any situation in which an individual is supposed to abide by the canons established by somebody else, and not be guided by his own judgment, is unacceptable for one in search of identity.” (Dennisova 8) Community is often found in the Black church but for those who cannot logically accept Christianity, the church is the last place community can be found.
Though the importance of the Black church should always be noted and acknowledged, many Black people do not feel that they need the church to live meaningful and fulfilling lives. In my own family, I was led to believe that a relationship with God through Christ was as necessary as breathing if you wanted to live a life with true meaning. Though I always doubted this to be true, I would play the role my family wanted and attend church. It was difficult for me to not sit there and analyze every word of the story that my uncle, who was the pastor of the church, said. The contradictions between scripture and the actions of Christians were countless in my opinion, and above all, the fact that Christianity was delivered to African people through slavery and suffering made me feel that this religion and its practices were not for me. Richard’s similar outlook emboldened my beliefs and allowed me to further my understanding of religion after passing that first step of asserting that the religion that was being forced upon you was not a good fit. Like Richard, the only person I could even come close to explaining this to was my mother.
Richard’s relationship with his mother was complicated though loving. Richard’s mother provided a guiding force for her son especially, after his father left the family. As Khethzi S. Kerena writes, “Mother’s moral background also had a dynamic effect on the behavior of Wright. When he scribbled vulgar graffiti on the walls, his mother punishes him and makes him correct his action. However, the same mother does not stand against the exercise of self-dignity and free will by her son.” (Kerena 38) Black women in this society are often burdened with the role of single motherhood and this, along with being “the most disrespected person in America” as Malcolm X once said, can often create a weight that is too heavy for any single individual to carry. Richard’s mother’s stroke was caused by the stress put on her by the society in which she lived.
Richard’s father, who is to blame for some of the stress placed on his mother left the family when Richard was just a boy. Though this angered him, Richard soon forgave him because he understood he was simply a Black man struggling in this white world and trying to make it anyway he could. Mamoun Alzoubi writes “Wright meets his father after 25 years, the father who abandoned the family, Wright forgives and pities his father. Wright situates his father within determinate social circumstances; the father is a black peasant and Wright is aware of the ramifications of class.” (Alzoubi 184) Richard pitied his father. The Black man who deserts his family deserves pity and not sympathy for he believes that by escaping the family he initially made he can escape the prison that has formed in his mind. The error in his thinking is that the prison was not formed by his familial structure but by society and he can only run into another situation like one he has now or worse, while he lacks consciousness of this fact.
A complicated aspect of the relationship of Richard and his parents and many Black children and their parents is the subject of whippings. Black Boy begins with Richard starting a fire out of curiosity that burns some of his childhood home and when he finally is caught by his parents and admits to what he did, his mother prepares to beat him while telling him how worried she and his father were. “’You almost scared us to death,” my mother muttered as she stripped leaves from a tree limp to prepare it for my back. (Wright 6) Just a few pages later, this whipping is followed by Richard asking his mother about a white man who had beat a Black Boy to death. “Then why did the ‘white’ man whip the ‘black’ boy?” I asked my mother. “The White man did not whip the black boy,” my mother told me. “He beat the Black boy.” (Wright 21) The practice of “whipping” children comes from the days of slavery (Degruy) and Richard was right to ask his mother about the beating and use the word “whip”. The only difference between the two beatings was that the second did not stop until the victim was dead.
Beatings are an antiquated and horrible practice that I was never able to see the “love” in even when it was done to me by my parents. I could not be convinced that I was being corrected properly when I felt that I could be rationally spoken to and corrected that way. As a child of Haitian immigrants, I also was subjected to beatings as a child and though I knew my parents loved me, I could never understand how someone who claimed to love me could beat me in such a way. I began to channel the frustration I had with my parents, and the society at large, into creative avenues, as did Richard.
Richard begins writing in Black Boy as means to finally contribute something to the society in which he lived. His failed attempt at writing hymns for his grandmother failed terribly as he was not religious but when he finally wrote something of substance, he was astounded:
“I was excited; I read it over and saw that there was a yawning void in it. There was no plot, no action, nothing save atmosphere and longing and death. But I had never in my life done anything like it; I had made something, no matter how bad it was; and it was mine.” (Wright 105)
Richard’s path as a writer began there, but it would soon meet the disdain of those around him. From his grandmother, to his uncles and aunts, nobody understood the purpose of Richard’s writing. He was able to power through their doubts; however, like in the case with religion, he knew he was after something they couldn’t understand. Richard’s most powerful critique would come from the white woman who’s errands he was running for some extra cash:
“‘What grade are you in school?'
‘Seventh, ma*am.’
‘Then why are you going to school' she asked in surprise.
‘Well, I want to be a writer,’ I mumbled, unsure of myself; I had not planned to tell her that, but she had made me feel so utterly wrong and of no account that I needed to bolster myself.
‘A what?’ she demanded.
‘A writer,’ I mumbled.
‘For what?’
‘To write stories,’ I mumbled defensively.
‘You’ll never be a writer,’ she said. ‘Who on earth put such ideas into your nigger head?’
‘Nobody,’ I said
‘I didn't think anybody ever would,’ she declared indignantly.’” (Wright 129)
Richard was able to eventually bypass even this critique though its sting lasted longer than anything that had come before it. Like the girl in my class in the eleventh-grade, how was this woman to know she was speaking to the best writer she would ever meet? This would have been impossible to know at the time but would have been helpful for both white women, is an understanding of the capabilities of Black writers and Black people in general.
What is so powerful about Wright’s later discovery of H.L Mencken was that the way he felt about Menken, was the way I felt about him:
“I was jarred and shocked by the style, the clear, clean, sweeping sentences. Why did he write like that? And how did one write like that? I pictured the man as a raging demon, slashing with his pen, consumed with hate, denouncing everything American, extolling everything European or German, laughing at the weaknesses of people, mocking God, authority. What was this? I stood up, trying to realize what reality lay behind the meaning of the words . . . Yes, this man was fighting, fighting with words. He was using words as a weapon, using them as one would use a club. Could words be weapons? Well, yes, for here they were. Then, maybe, perhaps, I could use them as a weapon? No. It frightened me. I read on and what amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it.” (Wright 280)
To read his astonishment at the writing style of another great made me feel that if he could be astonished at another writer, and I be astonished by him, then maybe one day somebody could read me and feel this way. I realized that inspiration was a cycle and this affirmed for me that I should continue writing even if just for me to improve my ability so that maybe one day, I could write something of substance like Richard did.
Section II: Age 23
Pride in one’s race does not have to come from a negative place. A person can be proud of the accomplishments of their race without degrading the accomplishments of another. White supremacy, unfortunately, is built on the degradation of the accomplishments of other races and forcing the people of those races into designated roles. The role of the Black male, as Richard Wright explains in Black Boy, and I would learn as I graduated from college, was that of a brute. Richard Wright challenged this notion in not just Black Boy but in his other works and this brought about criticism from his peers. Tamara Dennisova writes, “Moreover, in the late 1940s James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison accused Wright in their "new wave" manifestoes of being a socially engaged writer and of creating, as a result, a simplified and one-dimensional image of the Negro.” (Denissova 1) I would disagree with both Baldwin and Ellison as I don’t feel Richard Wright was creating a one-dimensional image of the Negro but instead he was framing for both the Black and non-Black audiences, an image of what this racist and capitalistic society is capable of turning the Negro into. Pride in one’s race, and the confidence that comes with it, is the only combatant to this systemic destruction of the Black psyche and through his own story and others, Richard displayed this battle for his readers.
From early on in Black Boy Richard Wright gives us examples of the ways Black people are forced into roles and how this coercion begins at such a young age:
“We were now large enough for the white boys to fear us and both of us, the white boys and the black boys, began to play our traditional racial roles as though we had been born to them, as though it was in our blood, as though we were being guided by instinct. All the frightful descriptions we had heard about each other, all the violent expressions of hate and hostility that had seeped into us from our surroundings, came now to the surface to guide our actions.” (Wright 72)
I too would feel forced into a role as I grew taller and became a man. Several times I have been asked if I am a member of the New York Knicks when I wear my Knicks sweatshirt. This is especially odd, because a best friend of mine at the end of my college years was also six foot three inches tall and would often wear sports merchandise, but he would never get mistaken for a profession athlete. Often on campus, my fellow students would assume I was at school on an athletic scholarship, and didn’t just get in on my academic merit just as they did. This suggestion that I must be playing the role society carves out for Black men would infuriate me but also motivate me to continue to strive academically to prove more and more racist whites in academia that I am at least as capable as they are, and if not, more.
As Dr. Joy A. Degruy writes in her book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, not only do Blacks suffer from the effects of slavery, but whites suffer, in a different way, from their former position as masters. Their position, and the subsequent control of Black life has created an illegitimate superiority complex that is not only internalized but forced onto other people from other communities to believe as fact also (Degruy). As Richard wrote about his experience during childhood, he reflected upon the conversations about whites that he and his fellow Black boys would have:
"Them white folks sure scared of us, though.” Sober statement of an old problem.
…..
“Man, you reckon these white folks is ever gonna change?" Timid, questioning hope.
“Hell, no! They just born that way." Rejecting hope for fear that it could never come true. (Wright 70)
Reading Black Boy this second time, and seeing the similarities between the whites that I knew in high school and the now hundreds and maybe even thousands more that I met during my college years, I also wondered if white people could ever change. I had met white people from my hometown of Stoughton, Massachusetts and I had met white people from as far as Australia and it seemed they were all purposefully miseducated about their own race and that miseducation led to a sense of race pride that they would never let go of. Black people all over this country fain hope that the masses of whites may change but what makes it near impossible for that to happen is that their current image of themselves is built on lies and the oppression of darker skinned people. As James Baldwin once wrote in The Fire Next Time:
“They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act 0n what they know.” (Baldwin 20)
Another aspect of the role-playing this society forces marginalized people into is a role in which we turn against each other. As I grew older and left my hometown, I recognized in all the diverse people I would meet subtle tones of racism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism. This was odd to me because I recognized that we were all oppressed people battling the same oppressive system. That system benefits from our squabbles with one-another and elevates it to create the narrative that our communities are diametrically opposed to on other. In my second reading of Black Boy I recognized this in the moment Richard explains how he and his childhood friends would run up to, and taunt the Jewish people of their community:
“We Black children-seven, eight, and nine years of age-used to run to the Jew’s store and shout:
…Bloody Christ Killers
Never Trust a Jew
Bloody Christ killers
What won’t a Jew do?” (Wright 54)
During my first reading of Black Boy I bypassed this moment as merely kids being kids but as I read this a second time I recognized this moment in the novel for what it was. Black people and Jewish people are both subjected to hatred and stereotypes that other communities then believe and act upon when dealing with us. The same system that convinced people the Jewish people killed Christ is the same system that once said Black people were the son of Ham and that is why we are worthy of the conditions placed on us. As Mamoun Alzoubi writes, “Although it appeared the detest for blacks is weaved into the “texture of things”, Wright acknowledged that white and black people are conforming to socially expected roles that have become so conditioned that it receives an automaticity. (Alzoubi 183)
Identity is forged in community and a person thinks of themself similarly to how they think of those from similar backgrounds. Richard Wright was dedicated to discover his identity in all its many facets. As Tamara Denissova writes:
“throughout his life he was trying to define himself existentially, identify his roots, his place in life as a Negro, as an intellectual, as a man, as an American. That is, he was literally obsessed with the idea of self-identification. ‘Man must first learn about himself,’ insisted Wright in 1950 in one of his interviews.” (Denissova 4)
In Black Boy, Richard writes about these experiences from childhood all the way through his adulthood and what makes this book special is the realizations he came to as a child. Often, in literature, children are side characters and even in an author’s own personal narrative, much of the credit for their identity is given to their older versions of themselves. In Black Boy, Richard writes about the recognizing the importance of self-identification and self-discovery from a very young age:
“At the age of twelve I had an attitude toward life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive, that was to make me skeptical of everything while seeking everything, tolerant of all and yet critical. The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the sufferings of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful.” (Wright 87)
The consequences of this role-playing and marginalization is a glass ceiling that is forced onto the Black male is a glass ceiling that is both an external force as well as an internal one. A man has to believe he can do something before it can be done and when your society tells you repeatedly that you can only do so much and expects very little from you, it is easy to fall victim to those lower expectations and take the path of least resistance.
Richard’s dreams and ambitions challenged the insecurities of those around him and as I would go into the workforce after college, I found the same obstacles. When Richard was working as a dishwasher he was reading a newspaper called the American Mercury, this shocked one of his white female co-workers as she walked past him reading, “’Well,’ she exclaimed, ‘the colored dishwasher reads the American Mercury!’” (Wright 304) As someone who loves to read I often met the same shock when I would be in the break room at my various jobs reading thick books such as Native Son and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Like in Richard’s case the shock was even more exaggerated when I was reading something Black people weren’t “supposed” to like such as books about meditation and financial literacy. Sometimes when reading these books, a feeling would come over me as a brushed against the glass ceiling, I would feel that perhaps I am in over my head and that these waters I was swimming in weren’t for me. Richard had a similar feeling when he began to read constantly as an adult as he felt his newfound knowledge might make him unlikeable by the whites who didn’t expect much from him, “I felt vaguely guilty. Would I, filled with bookish notions, act in a manner that would make the whites dislike me?” (Wright 281) Black’s learning and expanding their horizons in the intellectual sense has always been seen as a threat to white society and this challenge of the way of life has always created an issue based off of the natural human desire to learn. Through making the Black person’s learning a taboo in itself, white society was consciously locking the Black population in a mental solitary confinement.
This challenging of the standard created a conflict in Richard that he quarreled with for quite some time, but eventually he decided that the life he lived prepared him to shatter the glass ceiling, “I could submit and live the life of a genial slave, but that was impossible. All of my life had shaped me to live by my own feelings and thoughts.” (Wright 284) In her work, Dennisova also writes about the proverbial glass ceiling that Richard is dealing with from a young age:
“The four-year-old protagonist of Black Boy wants, as any healthy child, as any normal person would, movement. But his childhood is permeated with a repression of movement that is championed by adults. The key phrase of the first section is "keep quiet."4 It sets the book's tone, showing the direction in which, a black kid had to develop, the repression of a young personality by adults possessing great determination and, possibly, by almost instinctive self-containment.” (Dennisova 6)
This glass ceiling would be present in every aspect of life. From the attempted coercion by Mrs. Moss to marry her daughter, Bess (Wright 239), to Richard being ask to not read the speech he wrote for his graduation ceremony but to instead write a prepared speech that he didn’t believe in (Wright 198), Richard was constantly asked to fit into the box expected of Black boys and men. There is nowhere the force would be exerted from more however, than the workforce.
Human’s should be able to see themselves in their work. Work allows humans to feel useful and productive which is something that is important to the identity of any individual. As Richard entered the workforce, he began to meet hostilities not just from whites but from his fellow Black employees. There is this idea that there is not enough room for all Black people to succeed in this society so within the community there has been created a crabs in the bucket mentality which means that as any person climbs to get out of the bucket, they are pulled back in by a member of their own community who through their own frustration, refuse to allow another member to succeed where they have not. The resistance would not only come from this mentality, but also Black men feeling like they were doing and saying what was best for their fellow Black men, not knowing that what they were actually doing was capitulating to their own dehumanization.
The three most important instances of Black resistance to Black progress come from a similar point in the book. First, as Richard graduated from school and entered the workforce, he struggled to maintain a job because he simply could not take the degradation from whites that was so commonplace. A friend of his pulled him to the side and explained to him the danger in how he was conducting himself:
“‘Do you want to get killed?’ he asked me.
‘Hell, no!’
‘Then, for God's sake, learn how to live in the South!’
'What do you mean?’ I demanded. ‘Let white people tell me that. Why should you?’
‘See?’ he said triumphantly, pointing his finger at me. ‘There it is, now! It's in your face. You won't let people tell you things. You rush too much. I'm trying to help you and you won't let me.’ He paused and looked about; the streets were filled with white people. He spoke to me in a low, full tone. ‘Dick, look, you're black, black, black, see? Can't you understand that?
‘Sure, I understand it.’ I said.
‘You don’t act a damn bit like it,’ he spat
He then reeled off an account of my actions on every job I had held that summer.
‘How did you know that?’ I asked.
‘White people make it their business to watch niggers,’ he explained. ‘And they pass the word around. Now, my boss is a Yankee and he tells me things. You're marked already.’” (Wright 209)
Richard’s friend believed whole heartedly that he was telling Richard what he needed to hear but Richard would have none of it. He knew that in his heart, he was determined to be a human being at work and when at home. This led to his determination to move north in search of a freer and fulfilling life. Black people have historically been misled in the United States and even globally to believe that white supremacy works most effectively where they currently are and that if they just can get over there, wherever there is, life will be better.
Richard’s determination to move north allowed him to subject himself to dehumanization for a short period because he felt he was doing it for the big picture and what would ultimately be a better life. As Richard found a stable job, he would meet and befriend a man by the name of Shorty, who was an elevator operator in the building, who would do anything to get even just a quarter from the white workers. When Shorty, playing the role of a foolish coon, allowed a white man to kick him in his ass for a quarter, Richard was disgusted. This disgusted Richard, but satisfied Shorty:
“Now, open this door, you goddamn black sonofabitch,” the white man said, smiling with tight lips. ‘Yeeeess, siiiiir,’ Shorty sang; but first he picked up the quarter and put it into his mouth. “This monkey’s got the peanuts,” he chortled. He opened the door and the white man stepped out and looked back at Shorty as he went toward his office. ‘You’re all right, Shorty, you sonofabitch,’ he said. ‘I know it!’ Shorty screamed, then let his voice trail off in a gale of wild laughter. I witnessed this scene or its variant at least a score of times and I felt no anger or hatred, only disgust and loathing. Once I asked him: ‘How in God’s name can you do that?’ ‘I needed a quarter and I got it,’ he said soberly, proudly. (Wright 257)
Shorty’s dehumanizing of himself was his capitulation to white supremacy. Shorty accepted the role as long as it benefitted himself personally not understanding it ultimately was to the detriment of not just him but of his race. The white man giving Shorty the quarter and saying “You’re all right” was the confirmation that Shorty had indeed sold himself out. Black men selling themselves out is not always so easy to spot however as sometimes it takes some internal mental gymnastics.
The final and third major instance of Black resistance would perhaps be the most unfortunate when Richard was turned against Harrison, a Black employee from a rival printing shop across the street. Their white bosses would feed both Black men information suggesting that the other was out to kill him and to be careful. What they also stressed was for the two men to never try and discuss the matter as the other would certainly take the chance right then to go in for the kill! Eventually both men started carrying knives for protection until one day they were able to talk, at a distance from one another, and they realized this was all a ploy by their white bosses to get the two of them to fight, and possibly kill each other, for the entertainment of the white bosses. This moment would not have been so disgraceful had it not been for after the white bosses knew that Richard and Harrison knew, and they offered the men five dollars each to fight one another in a boxing match, Harrison agreed. Richard refused but was eventually convinced by Harrison to do it for the money. Harrison believed that they could fool the white men and gain the upper hand by getting “easy” money. “’Look, let’s fool them white men,’ Harrison said. ‘We won’t hurt each other. We’ll just pretend, see? We’ll show ’em we ain’t dumb as they think, see?’” (Wright 272) Harrison was horribly mistaken as through sheer tension and the egging on from the whites, the fight got serious and the two men really tried to hurt one another. After the fight, when they left with their money, Richard describes his shame. “I could not look at Harrison. I hated him and I hated myself. I clutched my five dollars in my fist and walked home. Harrison and I avoided each other after that and we rarely spoke.” (Wright 274)
Section III: Age 27
At age twenty-seven, I had years of experience in the workforce and years of experience being a fully frown Black man in America. Unlike in my previous readings, I was able to understand Richard from a deeper level as my additional life experience broadened my scope and allowed me to see Richard from a more elevated level than in previous readings. America’s racist history is something that requires intentional undoing rather than passive reforms. In my third reading of Black Boy I began to understand Wright’s views on Blackness, the American psyche, and the working class. Having lived in multiple cities, and worked several jobs at this point in my life, I was better able to relate to Wright’s words in my third reading during the summer of 2020.
Towards the end of Black Boy, Wright’s analyzation of the American life should be analyzed on its own:
“I feel that America’s past is too shallow, her national character too superficially optimistic, her very morality too suffused with color hate for her to accomplish so vast and complex a task. Culturally the Negro represents a paradox: Though he is an organic part of the nation, he is excluded by the entire tide and direction of American culture. Frankly, it is felt to be right to exclude him, and it is felt to be wrong to admit him freely. Therefore if, within the confines of its present culture, the nation ever seeks to purge itself of its color hate, it will find itself at war with itself, convulsed by a spasm of emotional and moral confusion. If the nation ever finds itself examining its real relation to the Negro, it will find itself doing infinitely more than that; for the anti-Negro attitude of whites represents but a tiny part—though a symbolically significant one—of the moral attitude of the nation. Our too-young and too-new America, lusty because it is lonely, aggressive because it is afraid, insists upon seeing the world in terms of good and bad, the holy and the evil, the high and the low, the white and the black; our America is frightened of fact, of history, of processes, of necessity. It hugs the easy way of damning those whom it cannot understand, of excluding those who look different, and it salves its conscience with a self-draped cloak of righteousness.” (Wright 302)
This analyzation of the “American way”, especially as I read Black Boy while the country seemed to be tearing itself apart from the seams, especially resonated with me as it seems America was doing its best to not tell itself the truth. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said “The three evils of society are militarism, racism, and economic exploitation.” (King 45) America has at every turn relied on these three evils for its wellbeing and to the victims, there was only symbolic gestures rather than true reconciliation. The calls to abolish the police for example, is a call to end the neo-colonial occupation of Black and brown communities by a force meant to protect the oppressive system from them, and not the other way around.
Wright was pessimistic about the future of this country and as I read his words so was I. Even one of his biggest critiques, James Baldwin, would agree here as he once said “I do not have faith in the future of this society, I have faith in the society that will replace this one” (Abdelfatah) Now, we are in a society where the majority of whites, especially white males, vote in favor of the political party that takes the racial progression Richard Wright or James Baldwin as a threat to the soul of America. Ironically, they may be right, but it is the soul of America that needs to be reckoned with. The racial construct, the idea that built this country, is now being used against progressives at it seems every mention of racial reconciliation is met with accusations of “reverse-racism”.
Racism is a disease that belongs mainly, to the white population of America. It must be handled by all but ultimately, it is the white population that must reckon with, as James Baldwin once said “Why they felt it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place” (Baldwin) Wright felt that whites needed Black people to feel secure:
“But I, who stole nothing, who wanted to look them straight in the face, who wanted to talk and act like a man, inspired fear in them. The southern whites would rather have had Negroes who stole, work for them than Negroes who knew, however dimly, the worth of their own humanity. Hence, whites placed a premium upon black deceit; they encouraged irresponsibility; and their re- wards were bestowed upon us blacks in die degree that we could make them feel safe and superior.” (Wright 175)
This master complex as Dr. Joy Degruy spoke about, must be dealt with by whites but it must also be understood by the entirety of society so that non-whites understand their place in the world relative to their true selves and true history rather than through the lens of white supremacy. Currently, this system forces the non-white population to get what they can, even if it means, as it did for Richard, taking risks, “I gave him a pledge of my honesty, feeling absolutely no qualms about what 1 intended to do. He was white, and I could never do to him what he and his kind had done to me. Therefore, I reasoned, stealing was not a violation of my ethics, but of his; I felt that things were rigged in his favor and any action I took to circumvent his scheme of life was justified.” (Wright 178) This leads to a critique of not just the racialized system, but the exploitative nature of the capitalist system.
Before I had entered the workforce, from when I was sixteen, to even when I read Black Boy again at twenty-three, I never fully understood Wright’s critiques of capitalism. I agreed with him wholeheartedly on racism but it took being in the American work force for years for me to really understand what led Wright to his ultimate Marxist beliefs.
Richard Wright is known for his Marxist beliefs but what Black Boy so brilliantly covers is his introduction to those beliefs. Many do not know that Black Boy was only mostly auto-biographical with a key exception taken in the way of Wright’s economic status as a child. Mamoun Alzoubi writes, “As the writer of Black Boy, he wished to see himself as a child of the proletariat, but in reality he attached greater significance to the respectable standpoint of his grandparents than he did to his historical peasant past. Even though he later lived in abject poverty, he never adopted the values of his companions in the street.” (Alzoubi 182) Wright’s days living in poverty would come in Chicago where he lived during the Great Depression. The Depression revealed to Wright what the Great Recession had started to reveal to me, and would be cemented during the economic collapse caused by the coronavirus. Wright realized, when he was at his lowest moment in the welfare line, that the system was unfair in more ways than just racially, “The day I begged bread from the city officials was the day that showed me I was not alone in my loneliness, society had cast millions of others with me. But how could I be with them? How many understood what was happening? My mind swam with questions that I could not answer.” (Wright 335) Wright’s eyes were opened to the failures of capitalism that every worker had to adjust to, while the lives of the aristocracy were barely changed.
Richard’s understanding of Marxism was a lot tougher to understand when I was younger because I believed, at least to some extent, what I was taught about Marxism and Communism by the American school system. Then again, I lived in a middle-class neighborhood and was not frequently exposed to the pitfalls of capitalism aside from occasional visits to the neighborhoods in which my cousins lived. As I got older, and those visits became less frequent, I was led to believe that a middle-class existence wasn’t so hard to achieve in America and it was merely a matter of working hard. Though I believed systemic racism existed I did not understand fully the extent to which capitalism needed the poor to thrive. As I read Black Boy as a twenty-seven year old who worked in downtown Manhattan but lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, I saw everyday both sides of the American coin and I understood the extent to which the residents of Bed-Stuy were being exploited to allow Manhattan to stay so wealthy. As Mamoun Alzoubi writes, “The fulfillment of human need on a global scale is historically and rationally achievable, but this is suppressed under the regime of capitalism.” (Alzoubi 180) Wright believed it was not the “greedy” poor that should be feared but instead those who had no taste for the wealth of the upper class:
“I would make it known that the real danger does not stem from those who seek to grab their share of wealth through force, or from those who try to defend their property through violence, for both of these groups, by their affirmative acts, support the values of the system in which they live. The millions that I would fear are those who do not dream of the prizes that the nation holds forth, for it is in them, though they may not know it, that a revolution has taken place and is biding its time to translate itself into a new and strange way of life.” (Wright 335)
Richard understands fully both the desperation of those at the bottom of the economic ladder and the misunderstanding those at the top have about the desire of those at the bottom. Black Boy introduced to me the language of the proletariat and allowed me to know that I was not crazy for believing that this new and strange way of life was inevitable and it would not be brought along by those with greedy intentions.
In “Blueprint for Negro Writing”, Richard Wright writes, “No theory of life can take the place of life. After Marxism has laid bare the skeleton of society, there remains the task of the writer to plant flesh upon those bones…He may, with disgust and revulsion, say ‘no’ and depict the horrors of capitalism encroaching upon the human being. Or he may, with hope and passion, say ‘yes’ and depict the faint stirrings of new and emerging life.” (Abdelfatah) Wright’s understanding of the necessity of the writer is expounded on in Black Boy as he strives to get to the communist party to further understand the need for the arts as well as understand the vital importance the negro can play in furthering the communist cause. At the time, Black communist were being used by the party to prove solidarity with the working class and as laborers for the party. In his piece “Movies, Marxism and Jim Crow: Richard Wright’s Cultural Criticism,” Vincent Perez writes, “Wright explored the ‘relationship between class perspective and ethnic culture with the objective of bridging the gap between Marxism and Black nationalism.’” (Perez 163) This bridging would fail for Wright in Chicago as the party could not seem to accept the idea of welcoming Ross, a Black nationalist, back into the party, “’Dick,’ he said, ‘Ross is a nationalist.’ He paused to let the weight of his accusation sink in. He meant that Ross’s militancy was extreme. ‘We Communists don’t dramatize Negro nationalism,’ he said in a voice that laughed, accused, and drawled.” (Wright 392) An understanding of communism is needed to truly understand capitalism. One must be exposed to both and see both for the positives they offer, to be able to make the most informed decision as to which system they support. Richard Wright, as well as myself, would make the argument that Marxism is a more humane system but to the identity of every individual even in a capitalist society, there is a great benefit to being exposed to Marxist teachings and principles.
Conclusion
Black Boy shaped my consciousness, and I’m sure will continue to shape my consciousness, repeatedly as I grow older. My relation to this book is a testament to the power that diverse canonical texts can have on students of color. As Mamoun Alzoubi writes, “Black Boy challenges the mainstream African American literature during 1930s and 1940s. It sets for a non-essentialist and transracial worldview in literature, a new trend to canonical American literature. He challenges prevailing dogmatic ideologies to explore and experience freedom, equality, and justice.” (Alzoubi178) My consciousness of the issues that plague race and class in this country was not validated in any of the euro-centric canonical texts I was exposed to during my formative years and because of this, I initially read Black Boy from a position as someone who had thoughts but was scared to say them out loud. I read Black Boy I second time and approached it as someone who wanted from the book an escape from the white world I was diving into post-college. The book then not only affirmed my previous thought but planted seeds of new ones. My third time picking up Black Boy I was a Pan-African who was unsure about communism and the challenges that faced my people in the years that will follow. In Space, Knowledge and Power: Foucault and Geography, author J.W Crampton writes “a personal identity … is not a pre-given entity which is seized on by the exercise of power. The individual, with his identity, is the product of a relation of power exercised over bodies, multiplicities, movements, desires, forces” (Crampton 180). My identity, and the identity of thousands of Black boys, including civil rights legend Amiri Baraka, was formed by Richard Wright and his story. As Jerry W. Ward says in, “The Many Influences of Richard Wright: An Interview with Jerry W. Ward Jr”, “We shared a hunger for knowing that can never be completely satisfied” (Zheng 18)
Richard Wright affirmed my hunger for knowing in a way no white, and even many Black writers were not equipped to do. Identity is the most crucial part of human life and without exposing children to multiple perspectives and viewpoints through literature, we run the risk of affirming false identities and shunning those of students of color. “I was building up in me a dream which the entire educational system of the South had been rigged to stifle” (Wright 148)
Using auto-ethnography expanded my relationship with Black Boy in a way that I had never expected. To be able to reread the novel and put myself in the shoes of three former versions of myself was powerful for me personally and allowed me to flex a literary skill I did not know about. My recommendation to future scholars would be to put yourself in the shoes of the transformational novels and figure out what moments exactly formed how you are. It will not only expand your appreciation for the text but also further your understanding of the need for more diverse canonical texts. It is up to all members of academia to root out the systemic inequities in our school systems. What I got from Black boy, and every child deserves from canonical reading, is a reflection of themselves that validate their existence. Introducing diverse canonical reading may not root out systemic racism from the entire country, but it is an incredible start.
