Living Jim Crow

The Ethics of living Jim Crow by Richard Wright is nothing but disturbing and awful. Slavery has been abolished and Black men and women can live free and own their own home, material items and chose what job they will work. Yet, they are forced to respond to all white men with Sir and if they are unable to, forget or are not heard clearly enough it is seen as the most heinous crime towards man, and punishable by death. Often in this story, if the white man does not kill him, he says how lucky he is. He has befallen upon some godly luck, for he was not killed for forgetting to put sir before their name. These actions are so petty; it is sad and pathetic to read. It is one-step beyond what was before to instill control, or what little they have left. For this is a result of each person realizing that it is a very unstable and threatened hierarchy.

I don’t know what is worse, reading about the hideous acts towards the slaves in Fredrick Douglas’s piece or the petty actions over those in Richard Wright’s piece. Is it worse to be defined as a mere piece of property and treated as something less than a pet? Someone who is denied their personal identity, whipped and beaten without a second thought, and after finishing working for the plantation owners they are sent back to their hard floor and withering blanket to prepare for the next days work. Shoo fly shoo…

Or is it worse to be told, sorry we made a mistake slavery is over you are free, maybe even equal. Such fleeting words swept away with the actions of those who once relied on you for survival. Is it worse to have your dreams waved in front of you on an iridescent flag, while the rest of America declines your existence, punishes you for making strides, and picks at all those threads in your flag, one by one?

Every man new with each inch of their body how wrong it was to be treated in such a way, but they could do nothing. For the fear of death, was greater than any action one man could make against a thousand actions to bury each question and each seed of bravery.