Relations of the Text to Today

Racism is an age-old problem in America. For centuries there has always been a tough tension between the dominant Western White culture and the African American culture. Richard Wright's Black Boy and Ralph Ellison's "Richard Wright's Blues" talk about racism as a focal point.

Today, there is a huge misconception that racism is gone; that we have made it to the promised land of equality. It's a bogus idea to support and believe, however. There has been extremely significant progress in the past few decades as far as public acceptance and industrial racism goes, but it would be foolish and ignorant to believe that because there is progress it means America has banished racism.

Ellison wrote, "[There is an] attitude which compels Whites to impute to Negroes sentiments, attitudes and insights which, as a group living under certain definite social conditions, Negroes could not humanly possess," (1543). In other words, because of the Negro's origin, Whites will assign stereotypical attributes to the whole Negro race. This was a problem back in the 1940's when the essay was written, but it is also relevant to society today. Even today, society inadvertently places black in a category that puts blacks a place below whites. Stereotypes are applied to almost everybody within the black community when that is not warranted at all.

The battle against racism has made much progress over the years, but it is still entirely an issue. People like to overlook the fact that racism is still alive and well because of the progress that has been made. African Americans in inner cities are stopped and harassed every single day by police officers who conduct "random" stop-and-frisks. The same African American can go to the same school as whites, drink from the same water fountain and sit where ever he pleases on public transportation, but he still can't help but to think if he were white, would he have been harassed this day?

The case of Treyvon Martin is one that is very well-known: a weaponless black boy walking home at night gets shot and killed by a white man who assumed he was doing no good. The simple fact that this man got off innocent implies that racism is not as absent on an institutional level as one may think.

America has come a long way, however we still have a very long way to go. People tend to trick themselves into thinking that racism is gone because we have come far from slavery and legal segregation, but none of that makes a difference to the individuals whom deal with the constant prejudice every day.