Black Boy by Richard Wright

Black Boy by Richard Wright stands today, some sixty years after its initial publication, as still perhaps the most comprehensive and gripping look at racism in the American literary tradition. Wright is not satisfied to merely portray American racism as an insidious way of viewing the world, or as a perspective held by a number of hateful individuals; instead, Wright underlines the fact that the core of race and racism exists in the very fabric of society. In other words, Wright believes that it would be virtually impossible to characterize American society in the absence of racism. So although the particular instances in which Wright is harmed by racism may have been perpetrated by a finite number of individuals, Black Boy makes it apparent that these individuals are merely following a much broader and more horrible pattern. Overall, the scar of slavery and its associated ideologies has generated a permanent underclass. The culture in which Wright grows up deliberately attempts to stymie his talents out of fear for what they might bring.

The portrait Wright paints of America is a truly bleak one. Escape from the trials of life as a black boy seems almost altogether non-existent. Wright attempts to escape the South only find himself more fearful in the North; he escapes to Chicago only to encounter the same social barriers to success. In the end, Wright's escape is only truly possible through the act of writing -- it becomes his one link to an ideal world. Even at a very young age, Wright seems to possess a clue that life, for a black man, may never truly be fulfilling in any tangible way: "At the age of twelve I had... A conviction that the meaning of living came only when one was struggling to wring a meaning out of meaningless suffering," (Wright 100). Clearly, the act of writing becomes this struggle for Wright. Unfortunately, writing and literature are the two facets of the world that his own black culture seek to deny him throughout his entire childhood. So in this way, Wright is attempting to critique both black and white culture. Although the dominant, oppressive culture of white America aggressively places limits upon what is attainable for a black man, the oppressed black culture methodically limits the modes of escape for a black man out of the community's need for self-preservation.

One of the most initially striking features of Wright's writing is that the title of his book represents one of the main, palpable themes throughout the novel. Black Boy is deliberately titled to indicate that yes, of course, this is the story of Wright's younger years, but also that for him, there can be no separation between being a child, and being identified as a black child. Put differently, Wright's fundamental argument is that at every stage of his young life, the people he encountered and the society he lived in were intrinsically unable to separate his identity from his race. As a result, Wright contends that black people in the United States cannot simply live out their lives as ordinary human beings; instead, they must seek to live out their lives as ordinary black human beings. Accordingly, the definition of what it means to be an ordinary black human being has been generated in a society of white domination and racist ideologies.

It should not be surprising that the way in which Wright conceptualizes race in American society is directly analogous to the way one of his later associates, Simone De Beauvoir, conceptualizes the plight of the female in patriarchal society. Understanding her social theories can be beneficial towards understanding Wright's accomplishments in Black Boy. De Beauvoir agrees with Wright's general assessment of what it means to be a marginalized member of society. She is an explicit existentialist; De Beauvoir believes that for human beings 'existence precedes essence.' This means that although human beings are brought into this world in a particular form, the precise way in which they interpret this form is generated by their own consciousness and the setting in which they live out their lives. It is from this philosophical belief that external definitions of race, class, and femininity impress themselves upon individual people, alter the ways in which they view themselves, and alter the ways in which they behave. De Beauvoir, who is concerned with feminine issues, centrally sees the role of the woman as simply being the role of the "Other." Rather than possessing some mutual relationship with men, women assume the role of a minority -- something strange and different. Male run society provides one archetypal form of the ideal woman in order to mold this shapeless mass of humanity into a desirable quantity: "This arrangement suited the economic interests of the males; but it conformed also to their ontological and moral pretensions. Once the subject seeks to assert himself, the Other, who limits and denies him is none the less a necessity to him: he attains himself only through that reality which he is not, which is something other than himself," (De Beauvoir 139). It is through this individual feminine ideal that most actual women -- who fail to satisfy the mold -- are demeaned, oppressed, and controlled. This is because through attempting to conform to this ideal, women are surrendering the freedom that the innate differences they posses allow them to supply a wholly new definition of "woman."

Understanding this, it is relatively easy to understand how Wright and De Beauvoir came to be associated with one another in Paris. The philosophical position of De Beauvoir easily lends itself to the theme of racism; if existence precedes essence, then the reason Wright felt out of place was not because he physically was out of place in either the South, Jackson, or Chicago, but because his way of seeing the world was formulated by those who associated race with specific locations and social stations: "Once a person is in a landscape structured by racism, a conceptual mapping of race, of self and others, takes shape, following from and feeding they physical context," (Frankenberg 69). The expectations of others generated Wright's understanding of himself. Since he was born in a racist society, Wright's conception of himself was forever that of the "black boy."

One of the consequences of this sobering picture of American society is that Wright does not offer a way out: "Mr. Wright in this explosive autobiography does not suggest any constructive means for improving the lot of the Negro in this country.... If enough such books are written, if enough millions of people read them, maybe, some day, in the fullness of time, there will be a greater understanding and a more true democracy," (Prescott 121). Wright does not see race as something that can be ignored in our society. Like De Beauvoir, he sees the problem of racism as stemming from the very organization of our cities, our language, and our ways of relating to one another. Naturally, this makes it even more of an outrage, but nonetheless prevents us from delineating any empirical means towards solving the dilemma.

It is somewhat significant that critics of Wright's work have asserted that perhaps the key to eventual egalitarianism is the act of writing. Wright's book is seen as one step among many that are necessary to right some of the wrongs of society. After all, this is the only act that Wright feels he can contribute in a world seeking to silence his voice. Still, his understanding of structural racism is far more detailed and truthful than most other authors. Ultimately, this is why self-expression through writing can actually become an avenue to social change. He writes, "I had once tried to write, had once reveled in feeling, had let my crude imagination roam, but the impulse to dream had been slowly beaten out of me by experience. Now [after reading a Book of Prefaces] it surged up again and I hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing. It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different," (Wright 249). This is a powerful passage, because it reveals how Wright perceives writing as a way of both overcoming the obstacles in his difficult life, and as a way to transcend the horrors of the world. He notes that writing, to possess this transcending quality, does not need to be factual; fiction can lift people above their problems at least momentarily. Additionally, by becoming an author, Wright physically defies those who told him that it was not a befitting activity of a "black boy."

Doubtlessly, Black Boy is about structural racism and Wright's personal encounters with it, but the vital theme to take away from the book is that Wright has provided a model for, if not overcoming, at least coming to grips with racism. One critic writes, "Although Black Boy is strung with a series of episodes that illustrates various forms of racial oppression, the center of attention lies in our hero's transcendence of that oppression," (Hakutani 142). Wright indicates that surmounting oppression is an aspect of growing up. From this point-of-view, many people never truly grow up; Wright was fortunate in discovering his particular version of escape just in time.

Race remains a very complex issue. The differences between human beings are equally numerous as our similarities: in every way that we are the same we are also different. We may each have two eyes, two ears, a nose, and a mouth; but each pair of eyes and ears, each nose and each mouth is individually unique. How we consciously recognize these differences and similarities is primarily linked to our social setting -- though it may secondarily be linked to our genetic makeup. In other words, human beings over the course of their lives become accustomed to the company, appearance, and behavior of those around them; this is such an intuitive fact that it hardly bears mentioning. Consequently, when we encounter individuals or groups who are in some respect atypical from what we have become accustomed to, we immediately identify these differences and react to them.