Black boy

Oppression and discrimination are two themes that may not sound too far from our reality. They are present in every chapter of the story “Black Boy” by Richard Wright. Since the dawn of man there hasbeen many racial issues, and in “Black Boy we see how in the 1920’s black people suffered of racisms by whites. Sometimes, they lead to a series of events that seem unthinkable like what happened toRichard’s Uncle who was killed by a white man just because he had a prospering saloon. “Mr. Hoskins… he done been shot. Done been shot by a white man the boy gasped. “Mr. Hoskins, he dead.” AuntMaggie screamed and rushed off the porch (…)” (Wright, 1998, p. 54) Apart from the racial issues we can see another type of discrimination. Richard is qualified as an intellectual and thereforediscriminated by the communist party just for the simple reason that those people are afraid of him and his ideas. “Yet a new hate had come to take the place of the rankling racial hate. It was irrational thatCommunists should hate what they called “ intellectual” or anybody who tried to think for himself.” (Wright, 1998, p. 369) It’s unbelievable that somebody was discriminated just because of histhoughts, yet it is very common until now. The book also depicts how black people had been oppressed since before Richard was born and its effects it had for the life of that time. We can see how severelywhite man has conditioned this people. Griggs a friend expresses this when he says, “When you’re in front of white people. Think before you act, think before you speak. Your way of doing things is allright among our people, but not for white people. They won’t stand for it.”(Wright,1998 p. 184) Again we see opression later on in Richards life but this time coming from the communist party whichtells him to stop reading books and accuse him of being a Trotskyite which makes Richard get to the points of thinking “I could not meet Communists now without feeling a degree of fear” (Wright, 1998,...