Tuesday, September 15, 2015

A reaction to "The Ethics Of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch" by Richard Wright

The section of Richard Wright's essay we read in class recounted the experience of Wright being beaten by white men. He talks about having a flat tire on his paper route. A few white men in a truck pulled up and offered to give him a ride into town. One of the men offered Wright a drink. Wright said no thankyou, but was promply hit with a bottle and thrown off the moving truck. He fell into his bike's wheels cutting his shins badly. The men gabged up on him and baraded him with slurs and more violence. In the end the men leaft wright bleeding with a broken bike and the warning that he could have been killed by a white man for not adressing a him with sir. This axount was less about actual jim crow laws and more about the experiences blacks indured because jim crow laws provided a mask for abusw of blacks to be preformed under. To hear someone recall such a traumatic and shocking incident someone experienced as a child was painful. Almost more painfull was the tone of voice the essay was written in, that these events were commonplace, normal, acceptable. The subject comes off as disgusting to me, yet as a human who considers such things so morally wrong I feel both intrigued and responsible for learning and not ignoring the reality of what happened during the years of slavery, segregation, and discrimination. I hope that I can realize the pains these people went through to my best of ability. Doing so through a lens of respect, morning, and empathy. Without disrespecting any of my other classmates or peers and with respect for everyone's views.

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