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.