Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Wright coping with the white world
Wright states that he "began coping with the white world too late." What he mean by this is that too late on in life he learned that in order to be successful or not be killed it was a necessity to treat whites different from blacks. As a young kid Wright was different from many by the fact that he didn't not understand why some people had rights or authority over things that others didn't. Because of this outlook, he never was content to assimilate with all the other blacks around him that had no problem letting whites treat them badly. Many others were conditioned at a young age to automatically move aside when a white person walked by them, or knew the exact words to say to a white person in order to make them happy without a second thought. Wright view of the world did not let him be conditioned in this way. Now at an older age where he is finding himself in positions where he needs to have the outlook on life as his friends do, he does not know how to act in a way that won't get him in trouble with the whites. Unlike others, he has to think about every action he takes and every word he says to a white person, and this is extremely hard for him to do. He knows that he can not make it through life without getting in big trouble or killed, so he knows that he must leave in order to make it in the world.
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Sammie,
I think you pin pointed Wright's conflict with himself. He now is old enough to understand that in the South there is a white expectation of all black's behavior and one must live within those boundaries in order to be alive let alone be successful, but he has also encompassed this idea that it is wrong and unjustified. He is admirable compared to some victims of racism, because he is not lashing out and begrudging the white people, but attempting to understand and question the reasons for these warped standards, and he refuses to conform to them because he understands how messed up and unfounded their morals are. This leaves him in a predicament because he doesn't want to be defeated by the whites but he also has to preserve his life and well-being.
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