Race is a significant theme that is depicted within Richard Wright’s Black Boy, and Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah, as they utilize their characters to examine how race is perceived in America. Within the novels, the protagonists discover that race is a notion who’s roots are embedded within culture and is an ideology that is nationally prevalent. Their individual encounters also demonstrate to them how race possesses the ability to impede them from experiencing the totality of personal freedom and obtainable opportunities. Within the novels, racism is predominantly perpetrated by those at the top of the racial hierarchy and is powerful enough to mold and affect the manner in which members of the black community think and behave towards one
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In Black Boy, the ways in which whites feel and view blacks is transposed to the ways in which blacks begin to think about each other. For instance, in Black Boy, white perpetrators utilized their power and ideas of race to generate destruction within the black community through violence. The hatred and disdain that whites felt towards blacks was transferred to the black community and hatred and tension became feelings that blacks felt towards one another as they were deceived by whites. For example, in Black Boy, Wright discusses how although Richard and Harrison engaged in a physical confrontation with the knowledge that the altercation was arranged by whites, many other blacks were often blinded to this fact and sincerely engaged in altercations with their own people, ultimately creating hate and division among them. Additionally, we see how as whites tried to keep blacks intellectually inferior by depriving them from knowledge, blacks began to believe that knowledge was confined to whites. This is depicted when Richard is criticized for desiring to know what has happened with the animals being treated at the hospital. He states “my interest in what was happening in the institute amused the three other negroes…they had no curiosity about “white folk” things” (Wright,
In Black Boy, the ways in which whites feel and view blacks is transposed to the ways in which blacks begin to think about each other. For instance, in Black Boy, white perpetrators utilized their power and ideas of race to generate destruction within the black community through violence. The hatred and disdain that whites felt towards blacks was transferred to the black community and hatred and tension became feelings that blacks felt towards one another as they were deceived by whites. For example, in Black Boy, Wright discusses how although Richard and Harrison engaged in a physical confrontation with the knowledge that the altercation was arranged by whites, many other blacks were often blinded to this fact and sincerely engaged in altercations with their own people, ultimately creating hate and division among them. Additionally, we see how as whites tried to keep blacks intellectually inferior by depriving them from knowledge, blacks began to believe that knowledge was confined to whites. This is depicted when Richard is criticized for desiring to know what has happened with the animals being treated at the hospital. He states “my interest in what was happening in the institute amused the three other negroes…they had no curiosity about “white folk” things” (Wright,