Saturday, October 2, 2010

The Ethics of Living Jim Crow

In the essay “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow”, Richard Wright illustrates the harsh conditions black people had to live under. Richard Wright starts off as a young black boy living the south under the hardship of a daily black person’s life. The system is basically biased against black people. The white man has the upper hand in all cases. Generally, it was the white public who made these rules in the streets about how black people need to respect them or else there will be consciences. Black people were not being paid equally as the whites. They usually were mistreated and harmed if they disrespected a white person even if the cause was minor such as forgetting to say “Sir” to a white man after every sentence. The black man had to deal with every misbehavior of the white man. For example, when a black male and black female were walking down the street, a white man disrespected the black woman by touching her improperly leaving the black man hopeless and defenseless about the situation. Even the law enforcement did not properly respond to a crime when it was committed by a white man harming a black person.
It is obvious that the white public had their way with the black people. The way they held on to this power was by publicly showing their power by beating up black people for minor reasons. They made sure that the black public was showing full respect towards the whites. The black public just had to deal with the rules if they wanted to stay alive and well.
Resistance had to be properly established if it is going to work. There has to be large community group meetings to lay out the problems on the table. They will eventually need to some how form a visible resistance to the abuse they were receiving from the whites. They can not be afraid to walk down the streets in big numbers. Slowly but surely, whites will get use to the fact that they are sharing the streets with the black people. If violence does break through, it will eventually be big enough to be heard by the media and the Supreme Court.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Karlo - Welcome to the blog - good start. Think about how to use specific examples and quotes from your texts in your future posts. You're right that the public style of protest used was effective in gathering media attention - how did the Supreme Court get involved in Civil Rights?

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