BLACK BOY

Word Count: 1037

In the book Black Boy, we see many black people in the south
dealing with many hardships. One

of the most prominent problems for blacks seemed to be the "Jim
Crow" laws. These laws withheld blacks

from society, breaking them apart from whites and making it very
hard for them to live an even close to

normal life. Black people couldn’t express their own ideas at all.
They had to call all white men "sirs" and

all white women "ma’am". They couldn’t act the slightest bit
superior to whites. It was almost impossible

for black people to make a decent living in the south, and they also
had to take the abuse dealt to them by

he whites without even attempting ant resistance. Blacks in the
south also had to deal with the separation

aspects of the "Jim crow" laws. They had to sit in the back of the
buses, they had to use separate water

fountains and bathrooms, they were looked upon almost like they
had some sort of disease. These are just a

few of the "Jim Crow" laws that the black people had to deal with.

Richard was not the only one in this book dealing with racism. All
the people around him were

also coping with it also, friends co-workers and family had to face
the challenges of a racist environment.

Throughout the book we see these other people dealing with the
problems of an extremely racist society.

We also see how each person in Richards life deals with it
differently. There are a few people and insience

that stick out in my mind especially. The first one would have to be
an incident with Shorty. Shorty has

dealt with racism his whole life, and he has learned to deal with it as
he has grown. We see a great example

of how Shorty deals on page 269Shorty is faced with the problem of
no money, such as many other

southern blacks were, and we see that he is willing to do anything
for any amount of money.

" You can kick me in the ass for a quarter" (269,wright) As this
happens Richard witnesses the

whole thing and we can see that he is very disappointed in the way
Shorty dealt with the situation. He can’t

understand how he can put himself in that kind of degrading
position, and Shorty simply answers.

" But a quarter can’t pay for what he did to you!"

But we can see Shorty thinks differently.

Another example of a person that dealt differently with the Racism
around him was Uncle Hoskins. He was

a man just trying to make his own in this world. Minding his own
business, trying to run his own business

so he could support his family. We see that he owes some money to
some white people, it seems to play a

part at the time of his killing, but if you look deeper you see that the
most significant reason for him being

lynched was that he was a somewhat successful black man, and the
white people didn’t like that. Uncle

Hoskins is just a black man who tried hard to mind his own
business, and that was his way of dealing with

the hardships he was faced witThis is ONLY a preview of the article. If you would like to view the entire document, you must subscribe to Electronic References. Please register below now!

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