The Ethics of Living Jim Crow - Essay Example

? Sebastian The Ethics of Living Jim Crow (Richard Wright) Jim Crow laws were laws that sought to segregate the whites and blacks especially in the Southern United States from 1880 to 1960. Under Jim Crow, African-Americans were relegated to the status of second class citizens. The treatment, facilities and accommodations available for African-Americans were inferior to those provided for white Americans. Richard Wright’s autobiographical essay “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow” narrates a series of experiences from his childhood and adolescence in a white-dominant society where whites view themselves as superior to blacks. It explores the issue of white dominance through Jim Crow laws and how blacks act in response to these discriminatory laws and practices. Wright utilizes his childhood and adolescent anecdotes to explain the power of prejudice, segregation and discrimination upon the thoughts, feelings and actions of the African-American characters, compelling them to either accept their inferior role or defy it. The title of Richard Wright’s essay suggests that there is something ethical in the treatment of the African-Americans in the South as accorded by Jim Crow laws. Instead, Wright talks about actions that happened that are totally unethical and intolerable in a civilized society. The essay begins with the sentence, “My first lesson in how to live as a Negro came when I was quite small”. He then proceeds to relate a fight he had with white boys across the tracks. In the fight, Wright suffered a deep cut in the neck which required three stitches. Expecting his mother to be understanding and sympathetic, he goes home and relates the incident only to be beaten again. He writes, “She examined my wound, then slapped me.” Then, “She grabbed a barrel stave, dragged me home, stripped me naked, and beat me till I had a fever of one hundred and Sebastian 2 two” (Wright). Following this, Wright’s mother imparted to him the “gems of Jim Crow wisdom” and that is to “never, never, under any conditions … to fight white folks again” (Wright). His mother’s response to his fighting white boys taught Wright an important lesson; that he would find no sympathy from his family or members of the black community to which he belonged. Wright was traumatized by the incident, “All that night I was delirious and could not sleep. Each time I closed my eyes I saw monstrous white faces suspended from the ceiling, leering at me.” In this particular episode, Wright shows how blacks learned to accept the fact that they had a certain place in society and overstepping the boundary meant that severe punishment would be meted out. It was the duty of parents to teach their children to follow the rules set by the whites. Caryle van Thompson in her book, “Black outlaws : race, law, and male subjectivity in African American literature and culture” says “Wright recounts numerous incidents where he and other Black people were consistently terrorized” and that “A consistent theme of this enduring social bigotry was keeping Black people ‘in their place’ by legal and extra-legal measures” (Thompson 26). Wright’s mother in supporting the Jim Crow laws shows total submission to white supremacy. In her essay, “Jim Crow: The Man, The Myth, The Oppressor”, Cassandra Bass contends that “the strongest oppression Wright felt was not from whites. His fellow blacks were essentially the victims and oppressors all in one” (Bass 1). She further reiterates that “In a world where it was whites against blacks, Wright felt a sense of abandonment by the black community; instead of joining him in his anger against the whites, they seemed to conform to what was expected of them by the white population” (Bass 1). The white supremacy over the blacks is reiterated throughout “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow”. It appears when Wright applies for a job at an optical company. Since the whites Sebastian 3 demanded respect from the blacks, the blacks had to give it to them. “The morning I applied I stood straight and neat before the boss, answering all his questions with sharp yessirs and nosirs. I was very careful to pronounce my sirs distinctly, in order that he might know that I was polite, that I knew where I was, and that I knew he was a white man. I wanted that job badly” (Wright). Wright’s employer, too, wanted him to know his place in society when he reminds Wright “This is a white man’s work around here, and you better watch yourself”. Again, in the optical company where he was working, Wright’s desire to learn and improve himself was bluntly denied by his co-worker, Morrie, who asked “Whut yuh tryin’ t’do, nigger, git smart?” Wright was denied the opportunity to learn because he was black. Again, when Wright was accused of calling Pease “Pease” without the title “Mr” in front, he lost his job. His folks at home called him a fool and reminded him that he must never step beyond his boundaries and stay in his place if he wanted to continue working. This is a clear indication of the acceptance of Jim Crow’s laws by both the blacks and the whites. Another almost similar incident occurred after his bicycle tire punctured while Wright was delivering packages. He was offered a lift to town by a group of young white men. When he was offered a drink, Wright refused with a “Oh, no”, forgetting to address the man as “sir”. For this, he was hit with an empty whisky bottle in the head and this made him fall backwards from the speeding car. The white man then stopped to ask him, “Nigger, ain’ yuh learned no better sense’n tha’ yet ….. Ain’ yuh learned t’ say sir t’ a white man yet?” These acts of punishments and violence show the efforts of the whites to maintain their superiority and to keep the blacks in their places. Their prejudice forces the blacks to act in a submissive manner to avoid violence. Had the blacks resisted or fought back, they would have suffered a worse fate. In yet another incident, Wright was accosted by a Sebastian 4 policeman after making a delivery in a white neighborhood near sunset. Wright was searched and reprimanded by the policeman. Wright observes “Negroes who have lived South know the dread of being caught alone upon the streets in white neighborhoods after the sun has set.” He later adds “While white strangers may be in these neighborhoods trying to get home, they can pass unmolested. But the color of a Negro’s skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target” (Wright). Thus, the black man is expected to be submissive and to “stay in (his) place”. There could only be one reason for a black to be in a white neighborhood during the day and that would be to perform their menial work as cooks like Wright’s mother, or as maids and housekeepers. It would be unheard of for a black to remain in a white neighborhood after dark. Thompson observes in her essay that the sense of total submission to the whites is evident in the area of housing when she says “Segregation in housing helps to keep white people in the voluminous bubble of racial denial and it makes them willing to engage in violence to protect their racial space” (Thompson 27). This geographical division and segregation is mentioned earlier in the first paragraph of Wright’s essay. “Our house stood behind the railroad tracks. Its skimpy yard was paved with black cinders. Nothing green ever grew in that yard. The only touch of green we could see was far away, beyond the tracks, over where the white folks lived” (Wright). In “Introduction: To Lie, Steal and Dissemble”, authors Brian Norman and Piper Kendrix Williams notes that “Wright employs symbolic geographies to reveal how segregation shapes spaces in society ……. even at the level of foliage within a color palette for a segregated landscape” (Brian Norman, etal 2). Black people were expected never to exceed their boundaries. The submissive response of the blacks towards the oppression by the whites is shown by Sebastian 5 many of the characters in Wright’s essay. It is shown primarily by his mother and the other folks at home who asked him to accept the black man’s inferiority. They strongly believed that this was the best course of action. Any other choice of action would not only have been futile but would have resulted in dire consequences. This attitude of futility can also be seen by the other characters and even by Wright himself. Wright was walking home with a black maid one day, when they passed a white watchman who took the liberty of slapping the maid on her buttock. Wright could only stare in disbelief and could not bring himself to do anything else as the guard had pulled out his gun. Ashamed to face the maid, he walked ahead of her. Realizing his feelings, the maid consoles him saying, “Don’t be a fool; yuh couldn’t help it!” (Wright). Had Wright reacted or retaliated in any manner, he would have received the same fate as the two black men the white watchman had earlier killed in “self-defense”. On another occasion, Wright witnesses his boss and twelve year old son beat a black woman. When the woman came across a policeman, he did not question her about her injuries. Instead, he accused her of being drunk. Although there was ample evidence that the woman was beaten - the floor was covered with blood and there were strands of hair and bits of clothing on the floor – there was nothing Wright himself could do. All he was capable of doing was to sit and stare at the bloody floor until the cigarette he was smoking went out. Later, while having lunch, he told his fellow blacks about the incident but no one seemed surprised. In fact, one of the blacks actually claimed that the woman was lucky to have not been raped. This incident shows the prevailing submissive attitude of the blacks at that time. They were trapped in their inferior roles from which there was no escape. The majority of blacks chose to accept their roles as spelt out by the whites. They were forced to resign themselves to these submissive roles because it was the only way they Sebastian 6 could survive without any confrontation. Wright portrays them as staying in their places provided under the Jim Crow system and obeying all their commands. Wright writes about what would have happened to these black folks if they did not accept their submissive roles. They would have been beaten, killed or castrated and run out of town like what happened to the black bell boy he worked with who was caught sleeping with a white prostitute. To the whites, a white prostitute was above an honest black worker. While it was alright for whites to have sexual exploits with black maids, it was completely forbidden for a black man to have sexual relations with a white woman, even a prostitute. Thus, Wright relates the injustice inherent in the Jim Crow system. Wright displays the majority of blacks, including his mother, his family and others as accepting their submissive roles. These include his mother and the other characters who accept their inferior roles. Through discrimination, segregation and violence, the whites ensure that blacks remain submissive to the whites. The blacks, in turn, accept their inferior roles to avoid confrontation with the whites. Wright reveals frustration towards the actions of these black people while he learns to defy the white man’s oppression and discrimination in subtle ways. It is pertinent to note that almost every section or episode of “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow” begins with a statement of how Wright progressively learns to live in a white man’s world. The first section begins with “My first lesson in how to live as a Negro came when I was quite small”, the next begins with “My Jim Crow education continued on my next job, which was portering in a clothing store” and the third with “I was learning fast, but not quite fast enough”. Other sections begin in the following manner: “My next job was as hall-boy in a hotel. Here my Jim Crow education broadened and deepened” and “I had learned my Jim Crow lessons so Sebastian 7 thoroughly that I kept the hotel job till I left Jackson for Memphis” (Wright). Richard Wright tells us how he has learned to live in the world. He learned about the harsh reality of living with the whites through a series of lessons, namely through his mother’s words “they (the white men) were absolutely right in clouting [Wright] with the broken bottle” and again when the other black folks warned him that he “must never again attempt to exceed [his] boundaries” after he had lost his first job. Wright also learned valuable lessons on how to act and behave under Jim Crow’s laws through the beating of the young, black woman in the back of the store, through the verbal abuse when he fails to address Peace as “Mr. Peace” or when he does not say “sir” when talking to the white man. Through discrimination and segregation, whites have created a situation where blacks accept their inferior role with a defeated attitude. However, Wright shows that he cannot accept such values and live in the world where blacks were treated as a lesser race. Even as a child, he does not accept such values. After he sustained an injury in a fight with white boys, Wright felt that “a grave injustice had been done” to him. Later, when he started working, he was eager to learn about his job but was unfairly dismissed. Eventually, when as a young man he took on a job, Wright confesses: “Here my Jim Crow education assumed quite a different form. It was no longer brutally cruel, but subtly cruel. Here I learned to lie, to steal, to dissemble. I learned to play the dual role which every Negro must play if he wants to eat and live” (Wright). While the majority of the blacks accept their roles submissively, Wright chooses to defy the oppression and discrimination meted out to him. He learns to do it in a subtle manner. As Brian Norman and Piper Kendrix Williams in “Introduction: To Lie, Steal and Dissemble” note, “In this moment, Wright gets at not only what it means to be a colored citizen under Jim Crow, but also the tactics, ingenuity and acrobatics Sebastian 8 required by the aesthetic project of representing segregation” (Brian Norman, etal 2). Wright describes how in spite of his inner rage, he forced himself to be polite and accepted humiliation and degradation for fear of retaliation. Ronald Davis, in his essay, “Surviving Jim Crow” has this to say: In dealing with whites, most southern blacks were forced to adopt accommodationist and appeasement tactics that played out in complicated ways across the region. Scholars refer to these tactics as “dissembling’” or a psychological ploy in which blacks assumed positions and the appearances of non-confrontation. Sometimes it meant shuffling and feigning irresponsibility, and sometimes it meant turning the other cheek and walking away. Almost always these appeasement stances meant adhering to a demeaning racial etiquette. (Davis) Thus, Wright eventually learned to cope with Jim Crow’s laws by employing these “psychological ploy(s)” . When Wright found it impossible to get books to read, he resorted to borrowing them from the white men who worked with him. One day, Wright asked a favor from one of them to let him borrow books from the library in the white man’s name. To Wright’s surprise, the white man consented. From then on, Wright borrowed books using the library card with the white man’s name. He was aware that “they (the whites) would not have tolerated it for an instant” (Wright) if they had suspected that some of the books they enjoyed reading were actually kept in the homes of blacks. Although he knows that he is breaking the rules, he does it. It is an act of subtle defiance. Open defiance would have resulted in violence or death. He admits towards the end of the chapter that “There were many times when I had to exercise a great deal of ingenuity to keep out of trouble” (Wright). He also showed subtle defiance again Sebastian 9 when he was expected to look at the white man from the corner of his eye and smile when the latter took off Wright’s hat and placed it upon the packages he was carrying. He pretended to drop the packages to avoid a confrontation and refused to give the white man the satisfaction of discriminating a black man. Wright asks two pertinent questions at the end of his essay: “How do negroes feel about the way they have to live? How do they discuss it when alone among themselves?” (Wright) He then offers a single answer to both these questions by using a quote from his friend: “Lawd, man! Ef it wuzn’t fer them polices ‘n’ them lynchmobs, there wouldn’t be nothin’ but uproar down here!” What Wright means is that there would have been chaos if it had not for the police and lynch-mobs that kept the blacks in their places. Wright is showing that the blacks were dissatisfied because of the prejudiced treatment of the whites but they lacked the courage to show it. Had they shown their courage, then the whites would be having a tough time controlling the blacks. In this way, Wright is voicing his frustration against the blacks for their passive tolerance of the prejudice and discrimination by the whites. In his article, “A Brief Biography of Richard Wright”, Russel Carl Brigano says that Richard Wright was “one of the first writers to portray often in graphic, brutal accounts the dehumanizing effects of racism on blacks. His stories usually center on alienated and impoverished black men who, denied freedom and personal identity, lash out against society.” The description best fits Richard Wright who in his autographical essay is denied the freedom to improve himself and enjoy intellectual pursuits such as reading. Frustrated, he lashes out at the oppressive whites in subtle ways. On the other hand, the majority of the blacks resign themselves to their submissive roles.   Sebastian 10 Works Cited Wright, Richard. The Ethics of Living Jim Crow. Xroads.virginia.edu/~ma01/white/anthology/wright Web 29 Oct. 2011 Thompson, Caryle van. Black outlaws : race, law, and male subjectivity in African American literature and culture. Peter Lang Publishing Inc., New York. 2010. Print. Bass, Cassandra. Jim Crow: The Man, The Myth, The Oppressor plato.mercyhurst.edu/english/breed/www/Richard%20Wright/.. Web 29 Oct. 2011 Norman, Brian and Piper Kendrix Williams. Introduction: To Lie, Steal and Dissemble www.sunypress.edu/pdf/61977.pdf Web 29 Oct. 2011 Davis, Ronald. “Surviving Jim Crow.” Jim Crow History. California State University. 21 Jan 2007 . Web 29 Oct. 2011 Brigano, Russel Carl. A Brief Biography of Richard Wright ecmd.nju.edu.cn/UploadFile/23/11004/ wrightbio.doc Web 29 Oct. 2011 Read More