Our country,
founded on idealistic principles of equality, has always struggled with
enforcing or even living up to its very foundation of beliefs. Richard Wright’s
autobiographical sketch, The Ethics of
Living Jim Crow, depicts the ways in which these values weren’t shown
throughout his life. These so-called “laws” that blacks had to obey in the
south are the epitome of inequality and injustice.
Wright
begins his essay where his enlightenment began—the day that he got into a “war”
with some white boys in his youth. Having been attacked with broken bottles,
the young Wright returned home bleeding only to be beaten by his mother. She
claimed that he “ought to be thankful to God as long as [he] lived that they
didn’t kill [him].” From that day on, there lived in him a fear very new to
him. “Each time I closed my eyes I saw monstrous white faces suspended from the
ceiling, leering at me,” he says. From then on he had a starkly different
impression of the cookie-cutter neighborhood and life that was so close, yet so
far from his own.
The following
years of his life featured many lessons in “Jim Crow Laws” through work. His
first job, at an Optics Factory in Jackson, Mississippi, taught him that, as a
black man, he was not entitled to learn anything, nor was he to anger a white
man, for a white man could get away with anything he wanted. A similar lesson
was learned at his second job as a porter in a clothing store as he watched
white men beat up a black woman, only to have the woman be arrested after.
His subsequent
jobs brought other findings—he should not be in the white neighborhood at
night, he should not be caught looking at a white prostitute, he should not be
with a white prostitute, and he should say what is necessary to please the
white man. Yet, it was most intriguing to find that as his so-called education
progressed it morphed into a less obvious cruelty to a more subtle form. To
stay safe Wright had to maintain a hyper-awareness of his actions—avoiding any
situations that would be even mildly disrespectful to the white man.
As Wright
ingeniously sums up his sketch, one can’t help but wonder how they maintained
the self-restraint needed to survive. His final sentence, a quote from one of
his friends, “Lawd, man! Ef it wuzn’t fer them polices ‘n’ them of lynchmobs,
there wouldn’t be nothin’ but uproar down here!” is a testament to the kind of
lives they were living.
Wright’s
masterful writing provides impressive visuals to completely develop an intrigue
in his story. The Ethics of Living Jim Crow is a valuable piece of historical
literature that can be used to better one’s ideas of the time period. Despite
the intolerance shown in his extensive “education,” it is important to
recognize it as part of our past. As a country, we have had our troubles with
maintaining our idealistic values, but it must be put into perspective—we have
come far since this time. This is not to say that we don’t have our struggles
now, just that they have taken on a different form.
Nowadays
our struggles with intolerance are less race-focused. An obvious controversy in
our country right now is gay marriage. As we stumble trying to develop policy
and morale on a national scale, it is integral to remember our past errors in
toleration. To truly make the United States the land of the free and equal we
must learn to put our differences past us and accept others, whether they are
black, or even gay. We must finally bring to life the ideals engrained in our
government to bring about the tolerant, beautiful lives that we all
deserve.
