Native Son Racism

Richard Wright; Product of the Environment
Fred Hampton once stated, “We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism.” Racism is a problem that cannot be solved with violence but an issue that must be solved by society coming together and accepting one another. Racism is an issue that society has still not solved to this day and is will still be an issue that prevails unless society fights it with solidarity. In Native Son written by Richard Wright takes place in the Depression era where the protagonist, Bigger Thomas lives in Chicago. Bigger lives in a neighborhood with mostly other African Americans
When Bigger first starts working for the Daltons it is a culture shock for Bigger because he has never been this close to white people ,and is even scared to perform everyday tasks without feeling fear. He learns that the Daltons are some of the few white people who do not want to harm him and want the best for him. Eventually Bigger is assigned the job of being Mary Dalton’s chauffeur and has to take her out wherever she desires. On one of these trips Mary introduces her friend Jan who is a communist. Bigger is thrown off with Jan because he is treating Bigger equally and treats him with respect unlike most people. One when these three characters were coming back from a night out in town Bigger had to lay Mary in her bed because she way too intoxicated to walk on her own. While he was putting Mary Dalton into her bed her mother who is blind walks into the room. Bigger gets scared because he is afraid that if it is discovered that he is seen in bed with white women that he will be punished so he holds Mary’s head down so she would not make any sounds. He ends up killing Mary Dalton and is now just another statistic. Although Bigger has behavioral issue it is not because of his race
Starting at very beginning of the story Bigger is in his family’s living room which is “dark and silent” (Wright 3). That is the first place that Wright talks about and it an environment filled with darkness and a “huge black rat”(Wright 5). It is not until “light” has “flooded and revealed a black boy” that the reader is able to tell the blackness of the characters. (Van Hoose 1). Even this early in the novel the reader can notice how there will be a theme of black and white. Richard Wright makes it so Bigger is a black man in a white world. Throughout Native Son whiteness is an embodiment, for example their are white people and a white cat and there are also more abstract or disembodied forms like white snow, white sunlight, and a “white blur” (Wright 236). “Whiteness is shown to be an omnipresent force in Bigger’s world, the novel consistently checks any move to define it as omnipotent”(Van Hoose 1). For example when the press wanted to know about the disappearance of Mary Dalton. “Mr. Dalton’s face was dead-white and his bloodshot eyes were set above patches of dark colored skin” (Wright 201). Blackness and whiteness are condensed into a single place and it is clear that the