Living Jim Crow

In the reading “Wright/The Ethics of Living Jim Crow” I learned to value what I usually don’t, and that is my rights as a civilian. In the reading, there is a young African-American boy who grew up in Arkansas. The young boy experiences a very traumatic time in which he learns the hard way about Jim Crow Laws and how they will effect his everyday life.
The reading begins with the young African-American boy playing with his other black friends in the back of his yard. His yard is behind the railroad tracks and from time to time the black kids and white kids from across the tracks would get into, what the black boy thought was playful fights. The black kids would throw cinder barrage at the white kids, while the white kids would throw cinder barrage back. The playful fight took a turn for the worst as the white kids began throwing broken bottles they found lying around the tracks. The young black boy was hit in the back of an ear with a broken milk bottle and began bleeding profusely. The young boy was in so much pain and when he told his mother what happened she was more disappointed in him than the situation. She looked at the young boy’s wound and slapped him saying “How come yuh didn’t hide? How come yuh awways fightin?” The young boy was saddened and confused by the way his mom reacted. The young boy and his family moved from Arkansas to Mississippi. There the family resides in a black community, far from railroad tracks and white kids. The young boy is so accustomed to living in a black community and being treated like an equal that when it was time to find a job he knew it was going to be with white folks. The young boy received a job and was ridiculed. He was called the n-word like it was his name and when he took a break he was called “lazy”. His co-workers were behind all of the name calling even though they were the ones responsible for helping him learn his way around the job. One day the young boy was in the factory and was confronted by the co-workers. The co-workers made up a story about the boy calling a white man his last name without saying “mr.”. This was a great insult and the black boy would either have to agree to the story or be calling the white man a liar. He was screwed either way and pleaded to let him leave with out getting hurt and he’ll never return. The black boy got away and left the factory without a job.
Is there still racial tension in the workplace? I believe there is not, from my experiences so far in life. I worked in factory myself over the summer, and there I had the opportunity working with a black man and we really hit it off. We worked well together and learned about each other’s past. I have not heard of any racial tension in the work place through the media that I can think of. I believe as a society, we have come so far to not stoop as low as to the co-workers of the black boy in the reading.
I enjoyed this reading a lot. The more we continue this semester the more I am shocked by the stories that occurred in our own country. I think about how Jim Crow Laws were around only fifty years ago and it really makes me appreciate where we are as a country and how we treat others as equal.