The Blues and Busses: Segregation as Viewed Through Literature - Assignment Example

The Blues and Busses: Segregation as Viewed Through Literature Segregation was perhaps one of the most disturbing government instituted programs of the twentieth century. As it is viewed today, we can see how morally wrong it is. There simply was no justification for it. Of course, at the time many people living in the South seemed to think it was only natural. This reflects a change in thinking from them until now. Writers have always taken it upon themselves to write about and expose social injustices. Two such writers were James Baldwin and Flannery O’Connor. Both of these writers attempted to make strong condemnations through their writing, and we can see that their writing reflected the attitudes of their times. By examining the attitudes held by the writers towards the time that they lived in, we can see how segregation seemed to be a natural institution and then became the morally reprehensible institution that it is today. “Sonny’s Blues,” written by James Baldwin, does not deal directly with segregation. Taking place in New York, specifically Harlem, it doesn’t make any direct mention of segregation as it was a southern institution. That doesn’t, however, mean that we cannot learn anything about the attitudes of the time. The story is considered “One of Baldwin’s strongest psychological dramatizations of African American life in our time” (Literature). It deals with the struggles of a young man, Sonny, trying to make a better life for himself and recover from the drug abuse in his past. Segregation is part of the larger African American experience as a whole. It can been seen as merely one aspect of this treatment, as this story demonstrates the difficult situations that African American had to deal with in the northern states as well. As James Baldwin has said himself, “one of the difficulties about being a Negro writer…is that the Negro problem is written about so widely. The bookshelves groan under the weight of information” (548). This piece doesn’t need to be directly about segregation in order for us to learn about how attitudes of the times could have allowed segregation to exist in the same country, even though it didn’t exist in the particular state that the story takes place in. The story takes place during and after the time of World War II. Segregation was in place in the South during this time, and it might have seemed to be a situation that was going to perpetually exist. The characters of the story seem to view this as the case; they seem to be resigned to the idea that their treatment is never going to improve: “But there’s no way not to suffer—is there, Sonny?” (56). With the way that they were treated, the characters of the story just seemed to accept their treatment as the way things are. As this was the way they were being treated, it did psychological damage to them, made them suffer, and the story details how many of the characters manage to deal with their suffering, some dealing better than others. To illustrate exactly how the characters in the story are treated, the one incident involving white characters needs to be examined. The narrator’s mother relates to him the story of how his father’s brother died. The narrator is unaware of his father’s brother until his mother tells him about him. This is the one interaction between whites and blacks in the story: This car was full of white men. They was all drunk, and when they seen you father’s brother they let out a great whoop and holler and they aimed the car straight at him. They was having fun, they just wanted to scare him, the way they do sometimes, you know. But they was drunk. And I guess the boy, being drunk, too, and scared, kind of lost his head. By the time he jumped it was too late…And, time your father get down the hill, his brother weren’t nothing but blood and pulp. (47) These white men in the car couldn’t even treat this complete stranger as a human being, thinking instead that it would be funny to scare a black man by driving a car at him. Also, instead of doing the right thing, they just drove off, assuming that because they had hit a black man they could just not tell anyone about it and get away with it. This is the kind of treatment they received that made them feel that they had to suffer. The narrator’s mother tells him that his father was never the same after that night: “Safe, hell! Ain’t no place safe for kids, nor nobody” (44). It went beyond the physical violence of the situation; there was a complete lack of regard for the black man by the white men as a human being. To them he was just a thing reduced down to something that was good for a joke, something to play with. This is the mentality that allowed people to think that segregation was all right, that allowed people to treat them as inhuman. With this sort of treatment, the characters of the story had to find some way in which to deal. Thinking about what the author said about writing about the black experience, the speech that Sonny makes to his brother can be viewed as Baldwin using Sonny as his mouthpiece: “For while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all the darkness.” (60). The attitude imbued in this statement is that this suffering because of the treatment that they receive is just something that they will always have to deal with; it’s not a choice they can make. The only choice that they have is how they will continue to deal with these attitudes. Some people find more constructive ways of dealing with it, but Sonny seems to be saying that it doesn’t matter, because dealing with it is all that one can do: “’But nobody just takes it,’ Sonny cried, ’that’s what I’m telling you! Everybody tries not to. You’re just hung up on the way some people try—it’s not your way” (56). Some people felt that the situation was so bad that they turned to drugs, like Sonny. As Sonny said, there was no way to just ignore their treatment; something had to be done. This being the case, Sonny personally felt that however people dealt with their suffering was all right because it wasn’t something that they should have had to deal with in the first place. In this we can see how the attitudes of the time were so prevalent that extreme measures were resorted to deal with them. Music was one of the few positive outlets that the characters were offered. Through music, Sonny attempts to deal with his psychological suffering, and he is trying to show other people this path: “The narrator sees that Sonny is reaching out to the audience, showing them through his playing how they can ‘cease lamenting’ over their suffering” (Kelly 5-6). Instead of protesting or filing lawsuits, turning to music was the way that these characters were able to deal with their suffering. The attitudes were so prevalent that they felt that they could not directly change their condition, and could only ease their suffering. Flannery O’Connor was another author that wrote about injustices, but as she was white, she had a different experience and a different approach. Since she couldn’t directly write about the African American experience, she wrote about white characters and their experiences with racism and segregation. Many times she rather savagely satirized her characters. This was rather brave of her, since their weren’t many white writers in the South that had similar views to her: “Given that many of her southern contemporaries were staunch defenders of segregation, O’Connor’s presence in the south intellectual scene is all the more remarkable” (Literature 136). Flannery O’Connor directly commented on the institution of segregation in her story “Everything That Rises Must Converge.” On one level, we can view a struggle between old southern values that support segregation and new southern values that oppose segregation. The story takes place in the South recently after the busses had been desegregated. The majority takes of the story takes place as a conflict of values between Mrs. Chestny, who represents old southern values, and her son Julian, who represents new southern values. Julian’s mother makes her views known succinctly when she says concerning African Americans, “They should rise, yes, but on their own side of the fence” (425). Her son spends most of the bus trip thinking about how much of a fool she is. His embarrassment of her attitudes continues as his mother says to another white passenger “I see we have the bus to ourselves” (427). Julian thinks of himself as superior to his mother. He views himself as being an example of the changing attitudes in the south that doesn’t agree with segregation and racism. In this we can see how there has been a change in attitudes. Instead of a country in which there was no hope for black people to gain any rights or be treated as human beings, the world that the story takes place in has begun to desegregate. Attitudes don’t change simply because laws are passed, as we can see in the opinions of Julian’s mother; however, it seems as though Julian’s generation will not simply just begrudgingly accept desegregation but embrace it. This is a big step forward from the complete lack of hope found in “Sonny’s Blues.” This transition, however, had not completely taken effect during the time period in which the story is set. Julian criticizes his mother’s views directly through his thoughts and words, but O’Connor also criticizes Julian through his attitudes towards black people. He has not completely changed in his attitudes towards black people, even though he probably thinks that he has. As he has had little to no experience dealing with black people directly, there as still a lack of misunderstanding that breeds an attitude of inequality within Julian himself. Though he thinks of himself as superior, through his attitudes in the story, we can still see how Julian doesn’t treat black people as equals: “He would have liked to teach her a lesson that would last her a while, but their seemed no way to continue the point. The Negro refused to come out from behind his paper” (425). In this we can see how Julian still treats the black man that is riding on the bus as an object. Though he thinks his intentions are good, what he does not understand is that he is treating the black man as an object which he is going to use to teach his mother a lesson. He doesn’t realize that even though he is wanting to do some good according to him, his attitudes are still relegating black people to a secondary role. In this aspect of the story, we can see how even though the attitudes of whites are changing and becoming accepting of blacks, it is not complete as they are still treated and thought of in a way that relegates them to secondary status. Julian does not want to become friends with a black person because he thinks of them as on the same level as him; he wants to becomes friends with a black person because it will upset his mother, and he thinks it will make him morally superior to racist white people: He imagined his mother lying desperately ill and his being able to secure only a Negro doctor for her. He toyed with that idea for a minute and then dropped it for a momentary vision of himself participating as a sympathizer in a sit-in demonstration…he approached the ultimate horror. He brought home a beautiful suspiciously Negroid woman…Now persecute us, go ahead and persecute us (430). He doesn’t really want to be friends with a black man or date a black woman; he wants to use them. He thinks of himself as superior because he doesn’t dislike black people, but he is practically worse than his mother because he thinks himself superior but has no grounds to make that claim on; he is a hypocrite. His attitudes have a long way to come also. The attitudes portrayed by the black characters of “Sonny’s Blues” and “Everything That Rises Must Converge” also appear different. While Sonny seemed to think that these conditions were only something to be suffered through and dealt with, we see one where the black woman with her child rebel against this sort of being thought less of. When Julian’s mother attempts to give the child a penny, the mother rejects the sentiment: “He don’t take nobody’s pennies” (432). The mother reacts violently, standing up for herself and her son. This is a big difference from the acceptance we see in “Sonny’s Blues.” Not only was she riding the bus same as any other person, but the mother felt that she could stand up to a woman who’s attitudes were so ingrained that she didn’t understand that she was being insulting. This demonstrates another aspect of how attitudes towards racism and segregation were changing. Flannery O’Connor uses the character of Julian to criticize people that think that they are above racist white people, but she still is in a way guilty herself of treating black people in the way that Julian was. She is using black people to teach others a moral lesson also: Apparently the Black man does not matter anymore to O’Connor than he does to Julian. Julian would use him immorally as a weapon to teach his mother a lesson—and he fails. Yet O’Connor has used him as a moral weapon to teach the reader—and she succeeds (Williams 132). Black characters usually only serve as secondary characters. They do not grow or learn lessons like her white characters; they are not dynamic. Instead, she becomes guilty of what she satirizes her own character of: “It can be argued that Black characters are for the most part only “issues” instead of people for Flannery O’Connor. They never change, never are explored on more than a superficial level” (133). O’Connor was attempting to criticize people that felt themselves morally superior despite the fact that black people were still just objects to them. She was able to see in others this objectification, but she wasn’t able to apply it to herself. In this we can see that attitudes against racism and segregation were improving, but they were not past the objectification of black people yet. As a black writer, James Baldwin wrote “Sonny’s Blues” as a story in which no relief from their oppression was present, only an easing of suffering. Flannery O’Connor wrote “Everything That Rises Must Converge” as a story that criticized racist people and people that still thought of black people as objects. Today, we can read these stories and understand the pervading mentality of the time they were written in, and we can separate ourselves from this reality. The character of Sonny probably could not have envisioned a black man running for president, let alone a black man that has a possibility of winning the race. However, even though attitudes have come along way, from thinking of segregation as natural or begrudgingly accepting desegregation, this is not to say that the transformation is complete. There are still people that claim openly of being uncomfortable with voting for a black president. Yet others would vote for a black president for the mere fact of being black. This attitude is akin to the well intentioned Julian that still just treats black people as objects. There is still much ground to go, but there is no denying that much progress has been made. The days when black people weren’t allowed to ride the same bus as white people don’t even make sense to us anymore, and perhaps the days when people would vote for a person based merely on skin color will someday not make sense to people either. Works Cited Baldwin, James. “Sonny’s Blues,” Literature and Its Writers: A Compact Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Eds. Ann Charters, Samuel Charters. Bedford/St. Martin’s, New York, 2004. 38-61. Baldwin, James. “Autobiographical Notes.” O’Connor, Flannery. “Everything That Rises Must Converge.” Literature and Its Writers: A Compact Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Eds. Ann Charters, Samuel Charters. Bedford/St. Martin’s, New York, 2004. 547-551. Charters, Ann, Charters, Samuel, eds. Literature and Its Writers: A Compact Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Eds. Ann Charters, Samuel Charters. Bedford/St. Martin’s, New York, 2004. Kelly, Robert A. “Sacred Sounds in the Humanities.” 1987, 10 pp. O’Connor, Flannery. “Everything That Rises Must Converge.” Literature and Its Writers: A Compact Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Eds. Ann Charters, Samuel Charters. Bedford/St. Martin’s, New York, 2004. 423-434. Williams, Melvin G. “Black and White: A Study of Flannery O.Connor’s Characters.” Black American Literature Forum, vol. 10, no. 4 (Winter 1976) pp. 130-132. Read More