EXTRA CREDIT

The Ethics of Living Jim Crow
In this chapter, we read about the autobiographical sketch of Richard Wright. In this chapter, he tells of how he learnt to live as a Negro even in his young age. His lessons started in his neighborhood where he could note differences between his black neighborhood and the surrounding white neighborhood. The differences in the houses and surroundings around the houses echoed which house was owned by a white or by a black. As early as childhood, Richard learnt that whites and blacks could not get along. This was evident in the fights that could break time and again between white and black children. Unfortunately, the parents also brought up their children while amplifying theses differences. For example, Richard gives an instance where he was hurt badly after a fight with white children when his mother was away for work. He waited anxiously for his mother so he could explain what happened. Instead, he was smacked and given what he called the Jim Crow lessons, which I believe are lessons of how Negroes should behave towards white. His mother reminded him of how she works for these white people in order to take care of him (23).They therefore, must be treated with respect because from them comes the source of living.
He further brings out how these Jim Crow lessons progressed in his late teenage and early adulthood. This is when they moved from Arkansas to Mississippi. He says they never lived close to a white neighborhood here. It was what he called the “local Black Belt” (23). Everything here was all made up of blacks. There were black churches, schools, black groceries and black clerks (23). This an evidence of what segregation can do. It leads people of the same color and culture close together while they are drawn further away from anyone who is not of their race. Whilst here, one of his Jim Crow lesson was that the only place he as a black boy can get a job is “where the houses and faces are white, where the trees, lawns and hedges are green” (23). With this thought, but yet with determination, he went out to places owned by whites to seek jobs. One of his dreams was to get a better job, at least better than what most of his fellow blacks did. He gives his experience and continuity of his Jim Crow lessons as he moved from job to job. He learnt that a white man, regardless of his status was to be call ‘sir’. At his first job in an optical company, he was reminded by one of the white workers to watch himself because that job was a white man’s job (24). When he told his fellow blacks how badly he was being treated at his place of work, he was told never again to attempt to exceed his boundaries but to “stay in [his] place” (25). From job to job, he learnt what it meant to be a Negro. He learnt that books are not meant for Negroes, that Negroes are ‘bastards,’ that you never say thank you to a white man least he thinks that you were receiving from him a special service, he also learnt of topics that white people enjoyed to discuss and those that they never wanted to hear a word mentioned about (30). He got to witness the most terrible forms of physical and psychological abuse. Finally, he says he had to learn a lot of ingenuity to stay out of trouble, he learnt “to lie, to steal, to dissemble and to play that dual role which every Negro must play if he wants to eat and live” (29).
In all this, we see how the issue of privilege has influence at all levels of the socioeconomic structure. Time and again, Richard learnt how to give honor to every white, regardless of whether he did the same job with them or not. Therefore, like Johnson states, the issue of the color line here, determines who receives respect and who doesn’t. It determines who is to over see the other.