Morality

In Feldman’s essay "Schools and Morals," he discusses how many Americans, especially pious ones, think that, without religion, one cannot have morals. As shown by Wright in "Black Boy," religion is not necessary to have a sense of morality. Wright is not religious, and yet he knows that stealing is wrong, that his actions can hurt others, that fighting another man is wrong. He learns what is right through experiences. There was a scene in Part One where young Wright takes soap in hand and writes curse words on his neighbor’s windows. His mother is flabbergasted and embarrassed by Wright’s recklessness and makes him wash off every word. Through this lesson, Wright begins to understand the power of words, and he learns to treat curse words with discretion.
"Schools and Morals" pondered the necessity of religion in school, and, I think, deemed it unnecessary. Feldman discusses how, in early American public schools, the King James Bible was standard reading, and children were encouraged to interpret the reading. This angered Catholics, who thought that the Bible should be taught as nonfiction and who thought that the King James Bible was a work of blasphemy. This led to the creation of private Catholic schools, although the process to such foundations was long and complicated. Over time, public schools were weaned off religion, leaving us the institutions we have now.
For a brief time, Wright goes to a religious school, and he finds the teaching dull and the teacher, his aunt, cruel. Wright also had a brief experience with organized religion when he attended a few church meetings. At one point, Wright is even baptized, although he feels nothing during or after the ceremony and ultimately abandons the whole notion of religion. And yet, Wright is not a morally corrupt character. He does steal, but this stealing helped save him from the South. He does not commit any atrocious crimes and is a relatively honest man. He lies to protect himself, but he honors the Golden Rule and treats others with respect, even Shorty, who hardly deserves it. Wright is an example of a man who is without religion and is still good. Wright, although not perfect, is a man whom Feldman would admire for showing fervent churchgoers that morality is possible without a hand on the Bible.

And in the end

“Black Boy” ends with Wright realizing that the world is swollen with unhappiness, its inhabitants weighted down by hatred, stifled feelings, and despair. He decides that both blacks and whites are unhappy, neither the minority nor the majority feeling any sense of contentment. After being thrown out from the May Day march, Wright feels completely alone and senses that only words can connect him with what exists of humanity. He decides he must “hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, send other words to…create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all… (384)” He also contemplates the worth of life in America. He writes, “What had I got out of living in the South? What had I got out of living in America?...All my life I had been full of a hunger for a new way to live… (383)” Although not detailed in the book, Wright eventually moves to France, fleeing hunger and hardships. His thoughts in these last pages of the book give some explanation as to why he does this.
Wright asserts that if America doesn’t “find its way to a human path (383),” then “all of us…are going down the same drain… (383)” I think America is, and was, stronger than Wright thought. There are always good people, and there is always some hope, although sometimes this hope must be dusted off to look appealing. Since Wright’s time, I think America has found its “human path.” Racism still exists in America, but Americans mostly enjoy equal rights. America’s commander-in-chief is a black man. Happiness certainly doesn’t glow from mountaintop to mountaintop, and it never will, but there is good to be seen and experienced.

Polar Opposites?

Wright thinks that “The artist and the politician stand at opposite poles (345),” but I disagree with him. Both artists and politicians try to connect with an audience, and both create. An artist attempts to convey emotions using paint, pen, and motions, and a politician attempts to explain government through speech and conversation. An artist shares his work because he wants others to understand, and a politician speaks with the people because he wants change. Both the politician and the artist need something from others, be that recognition or a vote. An artist creates personified emotions through the medium of art or words, and this work can change lives or inspire actions, and a politician enacts change through laws and choices. Artists and politicians are frequently opposed, as shown by Wright’s struggle with the Communist party, but both fields are linked through their desire to create and their need to communicate with the masses.

A Voice from a Crowd

Comrade Young manages to confuse Wright’s entire Communist literary club about the intentions of Comrade Swann. It’s later discovered that Young had escaped from an insane asylum. If one madman can almost convince a Communist club to release one of its prominent members, one voice can certainly move a crowd to action. This voice must be loud and relentless, but it can be done. I recently saw the movie “Milk,” a film that depicts the life of Harvey Milk. Milk was a San Francisco-based gay rights leader who, in the 1970s, fought laws that sought to diminish the rights of gays. The movie focuses some attention on Anita Bryant, a Christian woman who, in 1977, wanted to repeal a Dade County, Florida ordinance that illegalized discrimination against gays. She thought that the ordinance encouraged “the gay agenda.” People throughout the United States followed the repeal process closely, some praying it would be repelled, some fervently hoping it wouldn’t. The ordinance was repelled in 1977, leading to mass outrage. In San Francisco, gay men and women took to the streets. A riot seemed imminent, and so Harvey Milk was called to calm them. Milk stood in front of hundreds of angry men and women and asked them to march with him through the streets to protest the repeal. His one voice quenched their thoughts of violence. The group marched for miles, and no rioting occurred in San Francisco. A megaphone amplified Milk’s voice, and faulty facts backed Young’s crusade against Swann, but both men, fortified by either good intentions or bad ones, managed to voice their opinion to a crowd and created change.

Thoughts on Self-hatred

I read “Bastard Out of Carolina” last year for English, and the theme of self-hatred burned throughout the book. Bone, the main character, passionately hates herself because her neighbors and schoolmates look down upon her and her “white trash” family. Bone fights her low self-esteem throughout the book, but the book ends with Bone capitulating to a lifetime without compassion, a subsistence of violence and hatred towards all, especially herself. In chapter 15, Wright discusses the disease of self-hatred in black men. Reading Wright’s thoughts, I remembered Bone and how her intense self-hatred stemmed from other’s hate. Wright writes, “Hated by whites and being an organic part of the culture that hated him, the black man grew in turn to hate in himself that which others hated in him. But pride would make him hide his self-hate, for he would not want whites to know that he was so thoroughly conquered by them that his total life was conditioned by their attitude; but in the act of hiding his self-hate, he could not help but hate those who evoked his self-hate in him (266).” Wright goes on to explain that a black man filled with these ideas would become “inefficient, less able to see and judge the objective world (266).” If white men were to observe a black man in this state of mind, they would think him unbalanced, and this one black man’s bizarre behavior would further lower the white men’s opinion of all black men. I thought it interesting how the thoughts of a poor white girl in a fictional story mirror the meditations done by a black man in his autobiography. Both recognize, and experience, that odium is a horribly vicious thing. It’s a cycle that refuses to stop for hatred is born from self-hatred, and self-hatred arises from hatred.

North

It’s a positive change for Wright to leave the South. While living in Tennessee and Mississippi, Wright felt afraid and caged. In the South, he had been threatened and mistreated by white men. The South held his mother’s stroke, his uncle’s murder, and years of abuse and malnourishment. When Wright escapes the South, he leaves behind distressing memories, a diet of lard and beans, and a place where unhappiness seems content. The North is not Zion, but it’s a great improvement from the violent South. In the North, prejudice against blacks is not rampant, and there are no stifling “Colored Only” signs. Harriet Jacobs from “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” was unable to find well-being in the North because of her high expectations of northern people, but I think Wright has more realistic expectations of what he will find and who he will meet in the North.

Subservience

Unfortuantely, subservience is a fact of life. In the work force, we are required to answer to our bosses, and at school, we answer to our teachers. Subservience ensures that we keep our jobs and maintain our grades. Rebellion always looms as an option but often reveals itself as impractical or dangerous. In "Black Boy," Wright accepts subservience so he can receive a steady salary. In Memphis, Wright takes on a job at an optical company and realizes quickly that he will receive tips from whites at the company if he runs errands for them. He “buys their lunches, pays their bills, and delivers notes for them to their stenographer girl friends in near-by office buildings. The first day [he] made a dollar and a half in tips (224).” These errands are lowly and completely unrelated to the tasks of an optometrist, but Wright does them to earn extra money. During his lunch breaks at the company, Wright eats with other black workers, and they lament over white prejudice. Wright writes, “But under all our talk floated a latent sense of violence; the whites had drawn a line over which we dared not step and we accepted that line because our bread was at stake (229).” Wrights and his friends are subservient to whites so that they can keep their jobs, maintain some sort of peace, and have a morsel of bread to eat for dinner.

White World

Wright is unused to acting subservient to whites. As a young child, he recognized that whites were somehow better and greater than him, but he never acted upon these beliefs. He did not grow up catering to or obeying whites. He heard of violence between the white and black race, but that was the extent of his white interaction. Now, as a young adult in the work force, he is forced to act submissive towards whites in order to get and keep jobs. He is unused to hiding his intelligence or his depression but does so to hold onto jobs. Wright loses many a job because he accidentally acts equal to his white customers or shows contempt towards his white superiors and bosses. Had Wright been raised to address every white man as “Sir,” and had Wright been conditioned to step completely out of a white woman’s way, perhaps he would find it easier to serve whites without looking them in the eye. Wright writes about a job he held briefly at a hotel, where he worked as a hallboy. Before he leaves work with a female friend one night, Wright witnesses a white night watchman touch his friend in an inappropriate way. Wright is completely shocked, especially when his friend continues to walk by the man as if nothing had happened. Wright stares at the guard, gaping, unsure of whether to protect his friend. The guard taunts Wright and advises him to leave the building. Wright walks away, feeling the guard’s gun pointed at his back. Wright’s friend was used to attention and harassment from whites because she had been “coping with the white world (196)” for some time. Wright, unused to blatant sexual harassment and submissive behavior, feels uncomfortable and stifled at all jobs he works at in chapters 10-11.

Just Say No

Wright is justified in refusing his principal’s speech. At the time of Wright’s graduation, Wright had discovered his passion for writing and was more than capable of writing a coherent speech. When he wrote his speech, it contained Wright’s own thoughts and emotions. Presenting his own speech freed Wright on some level, for it allowed him to voice his concerns and hopes to a large audience, recreating how he felt when he read his short story to his neighbor. The principal wrote Wright’s speech so that nothing vaguely disputable would be presented during graduation, but this seems both rude and cowardly on the principal’s part.
Refusing Wright’s speech is insulting because Wright had toiled in his studies to be able to present a speech at graduation. The principal should have recognized these achievements and trusted Wright to write a competent speech. The principal also forced his speech upon Wright because he feared Wright’s speech would be too radical. The principal wanted to please the whites in the graduation audience and convince them of the school’s neutrality towards the black race. His speech was canned, unemotional, and uncontroversial, and Wright’s speech was true. Wright wanted to speak the truth and share his intelligence and so justly refused the “bought (176)” principal’s speech.

Uncle Tom's Anger

Uncle Tom wants to beat Wright for being “a sassy black imp (157).” Wright had told his Uncle Tom that the time of day was about 5:18, and "If it's a little slow or fast, it’s not far wrong (157).” Tom feels greatly disrespected by such a reply and decides that Wright needs be whipped. Wright is angry with Tom because he feels he’s being beaten for a misdemeanor, something trivial and small. As Wright writes in the text, “… I was going to be beaten by someone who did not like the tone of voice in which I spoke… How long was I going to be beaten for trifles and less than trifles (158)?” Wright is made angrier by the fact that Tom is a new member of the Wright household and has never been involved in Wright’s life before this residency. It seems unfair that a man Wright was not raised by can beat him. When Wright sees his uncle stripping a tree branch to beat him with, he explains, “Now, listen, Uncle Tom, you’re not going to whip me. You’re a stranger to me. You don’t support me. I don’t live with you (159).” The scene ends with Wright using razors to protect himself against his uncle’s whip. When Tom relents to Wright’s razors, Wright tells his uncle, “You are not an example to me; you could never be… Your life isn’t so hot that you can tell me what to do (160).” Perhaps Wright is also angry with Tom because Wright doesn’t want to be disciplined by a man he cannot respect, a man who “weaves the bottoms of chairs for people to sit in (160).”