Oppression In Black Bottom By August Wilson

The Violence that Oppression Causes
August Wilson is able to capture all the struggles black people in America had to endure in the 20th century in his plays, including Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Two struggles that stand out to me are black people’s lack of access to good employment, and racial discrimination experienced everyday. As would be expected, anger in black communities is the result of these daily struggles. When some people get angry, they can easily not take it out on anyone and just wait it out because chances are they’ll get over it. In the case of oppressed people in general – black in this situation – however, it’s not so easy just to swallow one’s tongue, when they feel frustration it becomes harder and harder each …show more content…
In this play they are taken advantage of by the singer Ma Rainey and the white producer Irvin. Irvin and Ma Rainey team up and decide every part of the songs, while the band has to comply. Even though the band members are good, they aren’t irreplaceable. One band member, Levee, grows frustrated because he believes that he could form his own band, and not be controlled by Irvin and Ma Rainey. In fact his whole life, Levee has experienced pain and anger coming from white people, starting when he was a child: “I was eight years old when I watched a gang of white mens come into my daddy’s house and have to do with my mama any way they wanted” (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom 68). Levee goes on to talk about how little he could do at the time, how helpless he was. This feeling of helplessness is still present in this play because the band members are lucky to have a job at all, even though they are all skilled enough to have their own, successful band. Dr. Sandra Shannon, professor of English at Howard University says about the artists, “These men are forced to prostitute their wonderful musical talents for mere pocket change and pats on their backs” (Shannon 79). I agree with her in that the lives of these black musicians are restricted because of the white people in charge. Levee would rather take out his anger on the white producer, Irvin, instead of Toledo, another musician, who is in the same position as he, but if he did, Levee would lose his job, and starting his own band is not a plausible option because despite their talent, these musicians would probably not be able to play at good clubs if they weren’t represented by a white man. The daily racism that Troy and Levee experience is extremely unfair and is the main cause of pain in their lives. In both situations it seems that the main characters feel very oppressed, but have strong connections to