Wright indicates that surmounting oppression is an aspect of growing up. From this point-of-view, many people never truly grow up; Wright was fortunate in discovering his particular version of escape just in time.
Race remains a very complex issue. The differences between human beings are equally numerous as our similarities: in every way that we are the same we are also different. We may each have two eyes, two ears, a nose, and a mouth; but each pair of eyes and ears, each nose and each mouth is individually unique. How we consciously recognize these differences and similarities is primarily linked to our social setting -- though it may secondarily be linked to our genetic makeup. In other words, human beings over the course of their lives become accustomed to the company, appearance, and behavior of those around them; this is such an intuitive fact that it hardly bears mentioning. Consequently, when we encounter individuals or groups who are in some respect atypical from what we have become accustomed to, we immediately identify these differences and react to them.
Some have argued that in the Untied States these reactions fundamentally stem from our long tradition of capitalism and the free market economy: "As members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate," (Lorde 281). Certainly, these comprise the three general ways in which human beings tend to respond to diversity, and they can all be seen as negative influences upon society for one primary reason: they all reinforce the notion that conformity and similarities are more valuable...
To him, race is never ignored, nor should we expect human beings to be capable of ignoring it. Still, this should not prevent us from striving towards harmony by recognizing the far more numerous similarities between us: "My life as a Negro in America had led me to feel... that the problem of human unity was more important than bread, more important than physical life itself... [yet] in my concrete relations with others I had encountered nothing to encourage me to believe in my feelings," (Wright 318). In the end, Wright feels that the concrete dreadfulness of racism cannot be overcome on a social level all at once, but can be overcome through the individual mindset and self-release.
Works Cited
De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. New York: Alfred a. Knopf, 1975.
Frankenberg, Ruth. "Growing up White: the Social Geography of Race." From White Women, Race Matters: the social Construction of Whiteness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.
Hakutani, Yoshinobu. "Creation of the Self in Richard Wright's Black Boy." From Richard Wright's Black Boy (American Hunger), edited by William L. Andrews and Douglas Taylor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Lorde, Audre. "Age, Race, Class, and Sex." From Sister Outsider. Berkeley: Crossing Press, 1984.
Prescott, Orville. "Review in the New York Times, Feb. 28, 1945, p. 21." From Richard Wright: the Critical Reception, edited by John M. Reilly. New York: Burt Franklin, 1978.
Wright, Richard. Black Boy. San Francisco: Perennial Classics, 1998.
