The Stereotypes Of Richard Wright's Big Black Good Man

Most people are guilty for judging another person by their appearance, like the way they look, the way they walk and the way they talk. Some people even judge others in the worst way even if they don’t know that person. Sometimes you might even be right about the way you judged someone else, but this doesn’t mean everyone else that looks like that person thinks the same way. It is okay to have a first thought about a person when you first see them but it’s wrong to believe your first instinct on judging someone else. This leads to stereotyping groups of people. The most common stereotypes have to do with the race of others which is wrong because everyone is unique in their own way no matter what color their skin is or what continent they come …show more content…
Around that time in America it was very segregated which makes Wright’s story "Big Black Good Man” more powerful. Although Wright didn’t live in America, the things that were going on in his home country had affected him. Many authors argue that Richard Wright was heavily influenced by what is known to be The Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance is a movement that took place in Harlem, New York. It was an intellectual artistic musical explosion of African American culture. At the time it was called the New Negro Movement. It went from 1910s through the mid-1930s. The period is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage performance and art even though Wright was living in Paris at the time, which is the reason why many people argue whether the Harlem Renaissance influenced Wright as an author (History). The Harlem Renaissance was a big change in the African American Culture, which is very important because slavery ended around 1865 and Blacks were free to express themselves and they did that by using art, music, and in Wright’s case, literature work. At the time that this story was published it was pre-Civil Rights Movement. America was very segregated, the Great Depression recently ended, and the Jim Crow laws were going on, all which oppressed African Americans. A black man writing about the experience of an altercation between a white man and a black man from the white …show more content…
Stereotyping, similar to pre-judging someone else by their physical characteristics is wrong. Stereotyping in some people's eyes are funny, things like being a mama's boy or a jock, these stereotypes are funny to some people, but there is a line that should not be crossed and at times we as human beings cross that line and that line is racially stereotyping others. Stereotyping in general should not happen, but racially stereotyping others is outrageously wrong. Racial stereotyping is wrong, again, we all stereotype others at certain times meaningfully or unwittingly, but you must draw the line, you shouldn’t believe in the stereotype because everyone is unique in their own way. Like Olaf stereotypes Jim but tells himself that he had nothing against Black people. Olaf is racially stereotyping Jim, because he is Black Plus, why would one believe something that is not true? Stereotypes have been proven wrong in many test trials. For example, in a study that was taken “they obtained national character ratings of 3989 people from 49 cultures and compared them with the average personality scores of culture members assessed by observer ratings and self-reports the results returned inconsistent” (Terracciano). Stereotypes were proven wrong and the data below shows exactly that (Randomized