The Importance Of Oppression In 'Black Boy' By Richard Wright

Oppression is something we 've all witnessed. But how does oppression really affects individuality, community, and society? Evidently, certain members of oppressed groups continue to struggle for equality and opportunity, particularly during times of when money is tight. More specifically, the borders of races and ethnicities touch economic opportunity, political representation, as well as income and social mobility of people of color. However, there are factors of what influences people to become an oppressor or oppressed, or to have even slight racial views. In Richard Wright’s case in his autobiographical novel, Black Boy, Wright had been raised in Pre-Civil Rights America, where oppression is present and prevalent in the South, as well

Oppression caused by the white community results to the actions committed by the blacks, one like watching one of their own suffer at the hands of the former. They don’t retaliate to correct the wrongdoings that the white had transgressed, to making a stop to all the tyranny. Although a black man standing his ground can call for dreadful things, this domination over them will remain permanent until something or someone ceases it. However, instead of trying to work on that objective, they engage in conflicts with each other. As Wright is asked by two people to witness a trial of an acquaintance, he tells them, “You claim to be fighting oppression, but you spend more of your time fighting each other than in fighting your avowed enemies” (368). Blacks, in some way or another, claim that nothing will stop the harassment, but they don’t fight this injustice; they just cope by comforting themselves by thinking it’s just how life goes. Blacks have a sense of hopelessness within them after an excessive amount of suppression done by the whites, in which the blacks don’t know what to do anymore with this predicament. They had lost the light in the tunnel, and gave up. On the other hand, Wright makes the readers know that fear exists within the black community, which was the result of countless incidents inflicted by the whites. They would rather spend their days engaging themselves in the black community’s problems, that wouldn 't matter in the long run, instead of coming to a compromise with the whites, or confront them at the least, for they are scared and had seen what the latter is capable of. Wright also wants them to see it from his perspective, that the manner they’re representing won’t solve anything. The mindset the blacks had established in regarding the oppression from the whites is not an effective method of eradicating it, rather they are letting the problem be, allowing it to develop and have its roots so