Richard Wright

            PROTEST, DON'T PRAY, FOR YOUR LIFE: WRIGHT'S BLACK BOY AND THE JIM CROW SOUTH.
             "Had I kept the job I would have learned quickly how just how white people acted towards Negroes, but I was too naive to think that there were many white people like that. I told myself that there were good white people, white people with money and sensitive feelings. As a whole I felt that they were bad, but I would be lucky enough to find the exceptions." (Wright, 163) Richard Wright's autobiographical Black Boy delves into the mystique of racism in the Jim Crow South and one black boy's struggle to overcome it. Wright finds throughout his own passage into manhood that both white and black America will fight to promote the status quo and keep the black man from achieving. The only way African Americans can get beyond racism and internal black cultural oppression is to actively protest against accommodation and the politics of recognition. .
             Wright's struggle begins at an early age with other blacks. As a child Richard's father deserts the family and they are left to fend for themselves. As a result, Richard often goes hungry and begins begging for drinks in a local saloon. Richard's mother's response to his growing alcoholism was to beat him severely. However, this physical punishment cannot deter Richard because of his immense hunger, and eventually only the family's moving in with Richard's aunt and her husband save Richard. Thus alcohol, a great evil to the politics of respectability, saved Richard twice. Wright's debt to alcohol creates a contrast with the policies of middle class African Americans and shows a positive side of lower black culture.
             Richard was punished for not conforming to a social ideal promoted by the black community at large: the politics of responsibility. Wright sees no use for this political play for respectability because of the harm it causes himself and other blacks.