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The hardships that face blacks, which are written about by such authors as Ellis Cose and Derrick Bell, are part of a continuum of black writers' representations of blacks' inferior treatment by whites. How does this continuum reveal the impact upon the self-image of blacks and the degree to which they value being part of a race that has been the target of centuries of bigotry? Certainly, many oppressed people believe in and act on their value of themselves, not being defeated by the disdain directed against their group by members of the dominant society. What happens, however, when the oppressed person accepts the view of the oppressor? What happens when one's mind is invaded by an alien denigration of oneself and one's very existence? This chapter explores what happens when the mind of blacks, like black slums, is "a white-made thing." Self-hatred, self-rejection, and the acceptance of whites as the primary beings of one's existence result from the internalization of racism by blacks who suffer from these conditions. Such blacks live as psychological exiles from themselves and from other blacks, facts that are most clearly represented in the intraracial hostility and violence which are, in fact, manifestations of what could be termed interactive self-hatred. The writer who presents these topics and other related issues in their greatest complexity is Richard Wright. An examination of Wright's career as a novelist as a whole reveals that internalization of white bigotry by blacks recurs throughout his career and is a central feature of his first novel, the posthumously published Lawd Today ( 1963); his most acclaimed novel, Native Son ( 1940); and his last novel, The LongDream ( 1958). Moreover, Wright's treatment of the subject of internalization and other related neuroses is both tied to and illuminated by one of America's most influential psychologists, Kenneth B. Clark, whose work on internalization and self-image was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in its decision on Brown v. the Board of Education, which established the principle that "separate is inherently unequal." While both Wright's and Clark's ideas have been controversial for the authors' concentration on self-alienation among blacks, this topic is an essential aspect of how white racism has affected blacks' identity and self-perception. This chapter analyzes the increasing complexity with which Wright treated the subject of what happens when the white image-of blacks--invades the black mind in Wright's first novel, his best novel, and his last novel. Moreover, such social scientists as Clark, particularly in Prejudice and Your Child ( 1955), Stanley Milgram in Obedience to Authority ( 1974), and Richard Sennett in Authority ( 1980) lend important insights into such psychological complexes as those that occur when the oppressed is invaded psychologically by the oppressor. The protagonist's self-perception is an integral part of Richard Wright's fiction. This leads to a controversy involving Wright that first surfaced in regard to his autobiography, Black Boy ( 1945). [A]fter the habit of reflection had been born in me, I used to mull over the strange absence of real kindness in Negroes, how unstable was our tenderness, how lacking in genuine passion we were, how void of great hope, how timid our joy, how bare our traditions, how hollow our memories, how lacking we were in those intangible sentiments which bind man to man, and how shallow was our despair. This passage is but one aspect of the controversy that has surrounded Wright's attitude toward blacks. Indeed, much critical work on Wright (primarily his nonfiction, for example, Black Boy and Black Power, his book about his visit to Africa) and reminiscences of the man himself raise the issue of whether Wright was guilty of hostility toward blacks. James Baldwin "Alas, Poor Richard" shows Wright to have been disdainful toward his black fellow expatriates in France. W.E.B. Du Bois reacted angrily to the passage quoted from Black Boy, as well as to the book in general: "The Negroes whom he paints have almost no redeeming qualities . . . there is none who is ambitious, successful, or really intelligent." Robert B. Stepto has proclaimed Wright to be a "confused" man who, either by ignorance or design, was alienated from blacks and whose alienation is reflected in his "limited depiction of the Negro." Agreeing with Ralph Ellison that Wright was unable to portray blacks as intellectual and creative, Stepto echoes both Du Bois' and Margaret Walker's criticisms of Wright. According to Walker, "Black people were never his ideals. He championed the cause of the black man but he never idealized or glorified him. His black men as characters were always seen as the victims of society, demeaned and destroyed and corrupted to animal status." Houston A. Baker, Jr., seems to be one of the few critics to de- fend Wright against the charge of possessing a hostility toward blacks which handicapped his artistry. Wright's works are generally celebrations of life, particularly the complex life lived by black Americans. Wright repeatedly declares that blacks are affirmers: every imaginable pressure has been asserted against them while they have continued to assert the principles of humanity vested in the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights more fully and effectively than any other group on the continent. Baker's thoughts are provocative in the face of so much criticism which views Wright from the opposing angle. Baker's view prompts one to wonder who has made the more accurate assessment of Wright: those who find his feelings toward and depictions of blacks limited and hostile, or one who finds value in Wright's portrayals of and attitude toward blacks? An examination of Wright's ideas is an essential step in dealing with these questions. Those who complain about a perceptible self-loathing in Wright's works--his characters' disdain for other blacks and their desire to divorce themselves from blacks--should consider that Wright is illuminating a very complex frame of mind. This emotional situation is best expressed in Barry D. Adam's The Survival of Domination: The person who discovers himself or herself as a member of an inferiorized group is presented with a "composite portrait" which purports to define him or her. . . . Inferiorized identity [can appear to a member of the group] as an iron cage negating one's freedom. . . . The inferiorized person perceives an initial choice: (1) acceptance of categorization as an inferiorized member with the composite portrait of undesirable traits, or (2) rejection or lack of recognition of the self in the composite portrait, with lack of identification with the inferiorized group. This pseudochoice . . . [can] lead to one of two debilitating results, and, frequently, oscillation between the two: (1) guilt [and] self-hatred . . . or (2) flight from identity [and] denial. The hostility toward blacks that many readers notice in Wright's works is part of the self-rejection that can result from attempting to repudiate a racist view of blacks that one has internalized. Wright dramatizes, with growing sophistication, the self-hatred and rejection of identity that can be a consequence of blacks' being successfully inferiorized by accepting a white racist image of themselves in Lawd Today, Native Son, and The Long Dream. In his first two novels, Lawd Today and Native Son, Wright portrays the selfloathing and hostility toward other blacks that are a consequence of his protagonists' powerlessness. Lawd Today begins the saga. The racism that the protagonist, Jake, faces at his job is a major source of his self-rejection and his rejection of other blacks. Lawd Today, which Wright worked on from the late 1920s to 1936, was inspired in part by his experiences as a postal clerk in Chicago. The novel details a day in the wretched life of Jake Jackson, whose bleak existence consists of a job that he hates, a wife whom he loathes, and friends with whom he has superficial relationships. According to Michel Fabre in The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright, Wright used the details of his duty at the central post office in his novel Lawd Today. The enormous brick building [had] the worst conditions of all United States post offices. The discipline was worthy of a penitentiary. The chapter entitled "Squirrel's Cage" follows each step of the character's eight hour shift and accurately describes Wright's daily routine and drudgery in 1928. Having become a mere number after passing the armed identification control guards, he would first sort the mail by category, then the letters by destination, then cancel the stamps before finally putting the mail into bags, all under the constant supervision of a foreman. Dust rose from the bags, the lighting was harsh. The constant noise from stamping machines and the fumes from the ink only made matters worse. Every minute spent in the bathroom was recorded, and the penalty for being caught dawdling or smoking a cigarette was two hundred demerits. In the novel, Wright dramatizes how his frustration with white supervision and the limitations put on his existence by a racist society cause Jake to misdirect his anger toward his wife as he attempts to compensate for his white-created inferior position in American society. Hence, Lawd Today foreshadows both Native Son and The Long Dream in showing how blacks sometimes offset their inferior position to whites by displacing their hostility onto themselves and onto other blacks. One incident that demonstrates Jake's feelings of anxiety, dread, and rebelliousness occurs when Jake puts a few letters into an incorrect stack of mail, a white inspector gives him demerits for his mistake, and Jake feels he is singled out because he is black. When Jake things about the incident, He did not know of any other way that things could be if not this way; yet he longed for them not to be this way. He felt something vast and implacable was crushing him; and he felt angry with himself because he had to stand it. He had an impulse to brush . . . away everything. But there was nothing he could solve by doing that; he would only get into more trouble. And the feeling that he could do nothing doubled back upon him, fanning the ashes of other dead feelings of not being able to do anything, and he was consumed in a fever of bitterness. Reflecting on his frustration, Jake thinks that he would like to destroy the building in which he works. "If there was only something he could do to pay the whitefolks back for all they had ever done! Even if he lost his own life doing it! But what could he do? He felt the loneliness of his black skin" (125). From these passages, one can see that through Jake Wright illustrates a psychological complex which has hostility toward white racism as its foundation but which rebounds on the impotent person to evoke self-alienation that later will be metamorphosed into alienation from and hostility toward other blacks. Self-alienation and alienation from one's own racial group, about which Adam writes in The Survival of Domination, are shown by Wright in Lawd Today when Jake's and his friends' envy of whites brings forth feelings of selfhatred. The men seem to believe that if only they were white, all of their problems would be solved. They talk dreamily, for example, about a rich white man about whom they have read in the newspapers, and Jake even idolizes the gangsters about whom he has read: "Them gangsters is sports . . . all the time they's alive, they walk around knowing that any time somebody might shoot 'em down. Jesus, those gangsters is sports" (130). Reflecting on their situation, the men sing what they believe to be "the truth" (153) about their condition: A naught's a naught
A figger's a figger
All for the white man
None for the nigger. (153) Moreover, comparing the harshness of their lives to their image of how white people live, Jake says, "Sometimes when I think about it I almost hate myself" (145). The men's envy of whites and their resultant selfhatred reflect their feeling that if one has nothing, one is nothing. Thus, their anger toward whites is not manifested in actions toward whites but in self-denigration. Wright's representation of black self-hatred in Lawd Today and elsewhere can be illuminated by Sennett's assertion in Authority that many studies show that, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many people have felt that hardship was a sign of their inadequacy, that "[i]f you experience misfortune, you are personally responsible for being weak." Furthermore, "Studies of poor urban blacks, for instance, testify to their belief that to be on welfare, to be dependent upon people who are judging your weakness in order to decide how much you need, is an intensely humiliating experience. For all that these blacks may know that the deck may be stacked against them, the internalizing of dependence as shame occurs" ( Sennett 1980, 47). Thus, it becomes evident why Wright represents Jake as alienated from himself and from other blacks: they are as guilty of residing in a "cesspool" as whites are of putting them there ( Cesspool was the original title of the novel.) Wright underlines the displacement of anger onto other blacks in Jake's abuse of his wife. Jake feels that the only outlet for his anger is his plan to "stomp [his wife's] guts out," though by doing this he certainly never has any effect on the actual forces that are oppressing him (111). This destructiveness clarifies the relevance of Wright's use of a quotation from Waldo Frank's Our America as an epigraph: "When you study these long rows of desiccated men and women, you feel that you are in the presence of some form of life that has hardened but not grown" (108). That statement, as well as the fact that the action of the novel takes place on Abraham Lincoln's birthday, emphasizes that these characters, whose lives do not progress, remain, in fact, inert, no matter how much they may talk about rebelling or striking out in violence. Hence, Lawd Today represents, in a simplified form, a complex which Wright develops in more complexity in his next novel, Native Son, and in his last novel, The Long Dream: that white-inspired self-hatred and hostility toward blacks can trap blacks in a negative cycle of violence and ultimate self-destruction, even as white racism and the harm it causes to blacks continue to flourish. Native Son, the first novel by Wright published during his lifetime, is a great leap forward from Lawd Today. While Lawd Today handles the themes of internalization and inferiorization in a bare-bones, day in the life of an angry postal worker, neorealistic way, Native Son's naturalistic and existential exploration of the experience of a poor young black man has greater depth and intricacy, both in plot and in characterization. Kenneth B. Clark wrote about the importance of Wright's tale of Bigger Thomas, an alienated young man who kills both a white woman, Mary Dalton, and a black woman, his girlfriend, Bessie. While Clark had reservations about the sensational nature of the plot, he recognized its contribution to the literature on self-rejection and the resultant hostility toward oneself and others. Hostile and aggressive reactions to the inferior status imposed upon the Negro have sometimes received over-dramatic descriptions in the public press and in novels. Richard Wright Native Son--as well as other descriptions of Negroes who react to racial frustrations by blind expressions of hostility and aggressions towards any convenient person in the environment--may stimulate the interests of the layman and make him aware of the high human costs of racial prejudice. . . . Regardless of how [such stories] are interpreted, these patterns of reaction to racial frustration exist; they are a part of the high human and social costs of racial oppression. What is worth emphasizing in this passage is Clark's mention of how racism--and, therefore, white people--is the key to the hostility and selfrejection depicted by Wright in his novel and the real-life stories symbolized by the novel. Wright clarifies this connection in Twelve Million Black Voices when he points to white slumlords, such as those represented by the man for whom Bigger works, as bearing guilt for the warping of many blacks' personalities, which he felt resulted in great part from the wretched housing to which whites consigned many blacks who came to live in Northern cities. Speaking of such housing, Wright states, The kitchenette blights the personalities of our growing children, disorganizes them, blinds them to hope, creates problems whose effects can be traced in the characters of its child victims for years afterward. The kitchenette fills our black boys with longing and restlessness, urging them to run off from home, to join together with other restless black boys in gangs, that brutal form of city courage. The kitchenette piles up mountains of profits for the Bosses of the Buildings [white slumlords] and makes them ever more determined to keep things as they are. The reader of Native Son sees the decrepit and rat-infested conditions in which Bigger and his family live and sees the result of these conditions in his alienation from his family, his involvement in a gang, and the murders that lead him to death row. It is essential to remember that Wright understood the ghettoization of blacks to be the Northern whites' form of lynching ( Wright 1978, 212). Wright seems to believe, therefore, that Bigger's troubled psychology, his alienation, and his aggressions are, like the ghetto, a "white-made thing," to borrow a term from Lerone Bennett, Jr. Wright's emphasis on the connection among Bigger's oppressed status, his self-rejection, and his hostility toward others is best expressed in the scene in which Bigger chauffeurs Mary and Jan. Unable to respond to their friendliness (however directive and patronizing), Bigger is so conditioned to see himself as he thinks whites see him--as inferior--as he sits in the car with them, he wishes he could "with one final blow blot it out--with himself and them in it." It is fascinating that Wright emphasizes Bigger's hatred of these two progressive whites for their making him feel intensely and humiliatingly uncomfortable as being linked to his own self-hatred, for Bigger feels that he is a thing to be hated. Clark illuminates the psychological condition represented by Bigger: The rejected individual must either construct for himself or acquire from his narrow environment new values appropriate to his restricted and inferior status. These new values may be anti-social. But they strengthen his ego. They tend to give him some security, prestige and status within the caste to which he has been relegated. It is possible that his disregard for property rights stems from a basic desire for revenge and aggression against something considered so important by the society which has humiliated him. ( 1955, 53) To continue this line of thinking, it is more than possible that Bigger values his killing of Mary for similar ego-enhancing and vengeful reasons as those described by Clark. Hence, Wright makes it evident that Bigger's feeling that whites have made his blackness "a badge of shame," which he carries into the "shadowy region, a No Man's Land," offers him, to use Adam's word, a "pseudo-choice": acceptance of the ego-destroying inferiorization to which whites have subjected him, or an ego-and identity-salvaging move to drag whites into the "shadowy region" while he escapes this emotional zone with his new-found feelings of power ( Wright 1940, 67). In Native Son, Wright gives readers possibly the most alienated character in American literature. Bigger is alienated from his family, from other blacks against whom he and his gang commit such crimes as robbery, from whites whom he views with both fear and envy, and, most devastatingly, from himself. This alienation is developed further in Wright final novel, The Long Dream. The Long Dream focuses on a father, Tyree, and his son, nicknamed Fish, who live in a small Mississippi town. The self-hatred and aggressive impulses which Wright analyzes in Lawd Today and Native Son are manifested in both the father and son in The Long Dream. In fact, The Long Dream stands as a psychological novel which focuses on the tragedy of blacks who are so inferiorized that they, like Bigger, consider themselves to inhabit a shadow world, and self-aggrandizing and futile gestures are their only compensation for a devastated ego and deprived social status. It is clear that Tyree accepts the white-created racist circumstances which determine both his status and his identity. In fact, all Tyree wants is to flourish within a separate and unequal society, not to change it. This acceptance of white racism leads to one of Tyree's main conflicts: he is equally afraid of racism and of losing the status that he has earned by complying with the racist system that could result from challenging it. For example, by paying off the white police chief, Cantley, Tyree is allowed to run a brothel, the Grove, that is in violation of the fire code. Thus, as much as Tyree resents racism, he has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo: he can benefit from doing so. Furthermore, Tyree's self-interest in maintaining his status within the racist system is shown dramatically when he is somewhat relieved after Chris is lynched, thinking that now that whites have "had their . . . fun . . . [they will be) nice and quiet . . . for a little while." Tyree's "security could only be had by making victims of black men" ( 1958, 93). Hence, one sees that Tyree represents a psychology that has internalized a fear and acceptance of the negative and even deadly ways that racism can limit black people. Tyree's internalization of racism is such that he manipulates his identity in the presence of whites. This identity management is evident in his radical shift in manner whenever whites are near. Though outspoken and selfconfident when he is with other blacks, his son, Fish, notices that when Tyree is in the presence of whites, he becomes stiff and unnatural in his manner. . . . [He was] paying humble deference to the white man and his 'acting' was so flawless that Fishbelly was stupefied. This was a father whom he had never known, whom he did not want to know. . . . When the white man had turned a corner in the corridor . . . a change engulf[ed] his father's face and body; his knees lost their bent posture, his back straightened, his arms fell normally to his side, and that distracted, foolish, noncommittal expression vanished. ( Wright 1958, 168-69) At this point, Tyree attempts to teach his son his rule for dealing with whites: "Obey 'em!" (170). On this point, Stanley Milgram's comments on such behavior in Obedience to Authority are relevant. Tyree, when with whites "becomes something different from his former self, with new properties not easily traced to his usual personality." Thus, although Tyree tries to salvage his self-image by thinking of himself as successful and crafty, and as perceiving himself as having independence from whites as a result of having bribed the police chief into letting him own the Grove, he is, in fact, trapped in his assigned role. Nevertheless, Tyree's delusion of independence is manifested when he says, "I could almost git away with murder in this town. But you got to know how! . . . [A] white man always wants to see a black man either crying or grinning. I can't cry, ain't the crying type. So I grin and git anything I want" ( Wright 1958, 192). This passage is central to several points. First, here Tyree clearly represents an idea that Wright stated in an interview: America appreciates blacks as entertainers and objects of amusement, but it cannot coexist equally with its black citizens. Tyree's thought patterns, moreover, illustrate other key ideas held by Wright: oppression has so altered the personality of many blacks that they merely present themselves as images of what they surmise would be pleasing to whites. Wright concluded that what many whites feel is the natural good nature of many blacks is actually a mere facade that belies the true internal dissatisfaction in the hearts of much of the black race. Still, since blacks, in Wright's view, are good performers, the act that such people as those represented by Tyree substitute for their true character traps them in a demeaning position ( Kinnamon and Fabre 1993, 108). In Tyree, therefore, Wright dramatizes that blacks whose identity is shaped by white expectations are mere shadows without substance, robbed of any authenticity as their lives become a mere performance for whites who cannot accept them as fully realized human beings. The significance of Tyree's delusion of power and his true condition are clarified by looking more closely at his psychology. In Tyree, Wright has created a character of frightening servility and deep complexity. In fact, Tyree may be as complex a character as Bigger Thomas. Tyree's complexity is obvious when one considers his mentality alongside Sennett's discussion of "disobedient dependence. It is based on a compulsive focusing of attention: what would [authority figures] want? Once their will is known, a person can act--even against them. But they are the central characters. . . . [This sort of behavior] has very little to do with . . . autonomy" ( Sennett 1980, 33). One sees that in Tyree Wright shows the kind of behavior exhibited by those who maintain their status within an oppressive society by capitulating to whites. Their delusions of power are merely compensatory gestures that maintain a positive self-image. Wright also uses Tyree as a vehicle to represent how some blacks default whatever power they may have to whites, showing what a "white-made thing" their very identity is. This aspect of Tyree's identity is seen in his cringing at the thought of white supremacy and his resultant hatred of blacks. In fact, this aspect of Tyree's character is one of the main lessons given to his son in teaching him about racism. The behavior modeled by Tyree is especially significant if one considers it in light of Clark's comments on parental behavior in educating children about racism. A direct statement of elementary truth can be one of a child's first lessons in social ethics. Similar statements, geared to the child's level of understanding, can help him to realize that he is not to blame when people hate or reject him for personal characteristics over which he has no control. He can be helped to understand that prejudice against him is not a sign of his own inferiority. With sympathetic understanding and guidance, the child can come to realize that prejudice is primarily a symptom of the inadequacy of those who hold the prejudice. When a child is struggling for self-esteem, he may sometimes be helped by identification with one of his parents. ( Clark 1955, 118) Clark makes it clear that a black parent's attitudes and behavior serve as a model on which children may base their understanding of racism and feelings about themselves and others as targets of bigotry. On all these points, Wright uses Tyree to exhibit how internalization results in selfhatred and hostility toward blacks in general, which are passed on to the next generation. That Tyree has internalized racism toward other blacks is made evident at several points. Noticing his father's relief at Chris's lynching, for example, "Fishbelly felt that his father hated the black people now" ( Wright 1958, 93). Fish is right: Tyree seems to have internalized hatred toward blacks to such a degree that he clearly feels that blacks deserve whatever mistreatment they get. This attitude is obviously a rationale for Tyree's callous and exploitive treatment of blacks, even as he grins and shuffles before whites. This mentality represents how those who internalize racism elevate themselves above other blacks and thus try to have power over them, even when they know that whites hold the greatest power. That Tyree models this mentality and behavior to Fish is evident when he gives Fish the responsibility of collecting rent from his tenants, telling the boy not to grant any extensions on payments: "[I]f you let a nigger bitch owe you fifty dollars and give her five days to git out, she just might have enough sense to go and find another place to stay. Make 'em pay. . . . Remember, we black and we can't rent to white folks. So we have to be hard on our own folks to make money" ( 1958, 273). One can see, therefore, that one of Tyree's chief characteristics is his contempt for black people, whom he feels must suffer to compensate for the inadequacies of his own life. Tyree, therefore, can be understood to illustrate Clark's comments that "Low racial status . . . requires the individual to show deference and restrict his open aggressiveness against the dominant group" and to displace his aggression onto members of his own, already oppressed, group. [I]n view of the general social reality in which whites have superior power and generally are in control of political and law enforcement agencies of the community, Negroes are rarely able to express their hostility and aggressive impulses directly against them. In his relations with whites, therefore, the Negro is required to adopt substitute or indirect forms of aggression. The larger culture frequently encourages--or certainly does not discourage--substitution of other Negroes as victims of the repressed aggressions against whites. The relatively large incidence of violence within the Negro group itself tends to support this observation. Other ways in which the Negro may disguise his aggressions [include] . . . an assumption of the role of the meek, humble, and unaggressive Negro who makes a point of being deferential to whites. He learns what role is expected of him by observing and participating in the larger culture. ( Clark 1955, 56) Hence, the white-made thing that is Tyree embodies the neurosis described above by Clark and models it for his son. Tyree's hostility toward other blacks is, perhaps, a psychological justification for exploiting them (e.g., owning a brothel, keeping it open even though he knows it is a firetrap, and not feeling responsible when many blacks die in a fire there) and being happy with other blacks' misfortune. Milgram illuminates the complexity of the attitudes and behavior represented in Tyree. The major goal of Milgram's experiment was to find out how far people would go in harming others in order to obey an authority figure ( 1974, xiii). One factor that causes people to take an irresponsible attitude toward hurting others is "[s]ystematic devaluation of the victim [which] provides a measure of psychological justification for brutal treatment of the victim. . . . [M]any subjects [of the experiment] harshly devalue the victim as a consequence of acting against him" (9-10). This factor can be related to another factor explored by Milgram: self-image. The subject who chooses to obey orders that seem to inflict harm on another, in order to absolve himself of responsibility, shift[s] responsibility to the victim, who is seen as bringing on his own punishment. The victim is blamed for having volunteered for the experiment, and more viciously, for stupidity and obstinacy. Here we move from the shifting of responsibility to the gratuitous depreciation of the victim. The psychological mechanism is transparent: if the victim is an unworthy person, one need not be concerned about inflicting pain upon him. (10) Clearly, Tyree is using this line of thinking; him, there is nothing wrong with victimizing a "damn fool" like Chris or "nigger bitch [es]." Tyree, therefore, in effect teaches his son that one can reap the benefits of other blacks' misfortune without damaging one's own self-image.
The most significant example of Tyree's hostile, exploitive, and irresponsible attitude and actions toward blacks appears in his discussion with a white, progressive lawyer, MacWilliams, after the deadly fire at the Grove. Here, Tyree attempts to absolve himself of the responsibility of owning a brothel, doing nothing about its fire code violations, and bribing the police chief to keep the brothel open. Tyree is bold (or twisted) enough to try to convince MacWilliams of his innocence by saying, "Sure, I did wrong. But my kind of wrong is right; when you have to do wrong to live, wrong is right. . . . I took the white man's law and lived under it. It was bad law, but I made it work for me and my family" ( Wright 1958, 374-75). In arguing for his immoral actions to the white man Tyree not only shows his incorrigible selfcenteredness but also his need to have his actions validated by a white authority figure, all of which bears out Clark's and Milgram's observations on a psychology such as Tyree's, whose mind and identity are, as another black character says of him, "a dirty rag in other people's hands" (426). Tyree's identity is such a white-made thing that he even seems to fear the power that he may have over whites. This aspect of his character is clear when he deal with Cantley, the police chief, after the fire at the Grove kills scores of people. Cantley asks Tyree how he will explain to the district attorney how the Grove remained open in spite of its fire violations. In order to try to ensure that Cantley will help him, Tyree again acts the role of the deferential "Negro" by saying that he will not reveal that he bribed Cantley and by lying to him that he had burned the canceled checks which would prove both that he bribed the chief and that Cantley shares the responsibility for the deaths that resulted from the fire. Though Tyree can prove the police chief's wrongdoing, which he could threaten to do to enlist Cantley's help in protecting him from the law, Tyree is so afraid to assert himself that even after Cantley tells him that he will be indicted, he "threw himself tentatively on the mercy of the white man he trusted least on earth" (331). This incident shows Tyree's internalization of his powerlessness and subordinate status before whites because he feels that remaining powerless is safer than exercising his own power. Tyree again defaults his power when he pleads with Cantley to help him: "I'm lost! . . . I been your friend for twenty years and you done turned your back on me. You can't let this [indictment] happen to me" (340-41). It is significant that Tyree--for the first time--seems to assert himself against a white person and shows "an almost human dignity" (341). "With all the strength of his being, the slave was fighting with the master" (342). Yet, Tyree's flicker of self-assertion soon dies, and he begs Cantley either to help him or kill him. This obviously exaggerated bit of acting causes Fish to feel that "he was watching something obscene" (343). Indeed, Tyree further reveals his contradictory feelings of subservience and manipulation of whites when he tells Fish, after the incident, "You got to know how to handle these goddam white folks. . . . Hell, I done saved up enough evidence against the goddam chief to send 'im to jail for years!" (343). Still, Tyree relies on Cantley to protect him when he asks the chief to arrange to have blacks on the jury at his trial--in a small Mississippi town in the pre-civil rights era! This line of thinking is clearly ludicrous. Why doesn't Tyree blackmail the police chief, since he says he has the power to do so? One explanation is that he is still, to borrow Sennett's phrase, in a state of "disobedient dependence," for although he thinks that he has a degree of power over whites, Tyree, as Wright says, "automatically accepted his situation and worked willingly within it" (380). Another explanation for Tyree's continuing to obey and accept his role in spite of his potential power is, as Milgram says, that "[t]here must be a competing drive, tendency, or inhibition that precludes activation of the disobedient response. The strength of the inhibiting factor must be of greater magnitude than the stress experienced [the stress of wanting to disobey but not being psychologically ready to do so] or else the terminating act would occur" (43). For Tyree, the inhibiting factor is his inability to change his perception of and to defy the racial definitions of the South; Tyree believes that "Niggers ain't got no rights but them they buy . . . for years I done bought my rights from the white man and I done built a business. I got a home. A car" (474-75). Furthermore, years of conditioning that his "disobedient dependence" is the only way to have a degree of power causes Tyree to feel that he will lose power by asserting himself and thereby lose the fruits of submission. Tyree is psychologically unable, therefore, to utilize openly his own power--even when he has the means with which to do it. Only when Cantley double-crosses Tyree and spreads the rumor that Tyree is agitating to have blacks put on the jury does Tyree fight back (349). Only then does he understand that he is certainly doomed by choosing powerlessness. By finally acting (as opposed to "acting") by revealing to MacWilliams Cantley's complicity in the fire, Tyree at least seems to have the chance to see that there may be some justice in that he is not solely responsible for the Grove's having been a death trap. At this point, however, it seems that Wright wants to use Tyree's story as a cautionary tale for blacks who may be following the same road of internalization and inferiorization: Tyree's self-assertion comes too late--too late to save him. Even though MacWilliams vows to help Tyree, it is certain that Cantley will kill him. Wright describes the results of Tyree's lone, inadequate attempt to assert himself against a white person: You ate, slept, breathed, and lived fear. Somewhere out there in the grey void was the ever-lurking enemy who shaped your destiny, curbed your ends, who determined your aims, who stamped your every action with alien meanings. You existed in the bosom of the enemy, shared his ideals, spoke his tongue, fought with his weapons, and died a death usually of his choosing. (397) Tyree's fears are well-founded: he is ambushed and killed by the police. Tyree's tale and his ultimate fate are vehicles through which Wright reveals many complex psychological truths. The importance of internalization, inferiorization, and alienation from and hostility toward one's own group as a result of their inferior status vis-à-vis whites are all illustrated by Wright's characterization of Tyree in The Long Dream. Moreover, that he is a father ensures a multigenerational dysfunction, for his son shows that he has learned well his father's neurosis. To understand why Fish inherits his father's internalization and the resultant damage to his own psychological makeup, refer to Clark "What Can Parents Do" in Prejudice and Your Child, which provides incisive answers about how black parents can influence their children's feelings about race. Parents from minority groups in general have an even greater responsibility to their children than other parents. They must be sensitive to the necessity of counteracting the social forces that ordinarily tend to rob their children of self-esteem. . . . Paradoxically, the social forces that necessitate this relationship in the Negro family may interfere with the ability of these parents . . . to express warmth, love, and acceptance for their children--for the Negro parent is himself the product of racial pressures and frustrations. It is imperative, however, that this cycle be broken. Because it cannot be broken by the child, it must be broken by the parents and by the larger society. ( Clark 1955, 115) Because Fish's parents, particularly Tyree, fail on every count mentioned by Clark, the unbroken cycle of racial pathology continues. Clark's analysis of the role of black parents is essential to understanding The Long Dream because Fish's estrangement from blacks has as its genesis his estrangement from his family. Here it is important to take a closer look at the dynamics within the family and how they affect the son, Fish, during and after the lynching of Chris. Much as Wright recalls in Black Boy his confusion about why his family was leaving town after the murder of his uncle, Hoskins, he emphasizes how Fish, as a panic-stricken Tyree hurries home, wonders "why they were running instead of fighting? Pity for his father dawned in him. . . . He swallowed a lump of shame in his throat . . . as there flashed in him a picture of thousands of black people running" ( Wright 1958, 81-82). This incident is the greatest factor in provoking Fish's rejection of blacks because of their powerlessness and, more important, his even stronger internalization of white racist values in judging other blacks. Witnessing his parents' fear, "[s]uddenly he saw his parents as he felt and thought that the white people saw them and he felt toward them some of the contempt that the white people felt for them. . . . [H]e was ashamed of his father's fear. . . . [Tyree] was lost, and so were all black people" (82, 86). The impact of his parents' behavior on Fish is profound. According to Clark, "Some parents are more active and direct than others in influencing their racial attitudes; but every parent has some degree of influence. . . . Parents who do not take a conscious stand may still exert an influence on their children by their passive acceptance of the prevailing racial myths and customs" (121). The prevailing myths and customs Fish's parents model for him include the ideas that blacks are helpless victims, toys in the hands of a great white force. Thus, Fish's internalization of white racist evaluations of blacks and his shame are inspired by his family, mainly his father, who loudly blames the victim of the lynching for his own murder. Fish's parents are also essential in inspiring their son's maladjusted attitudes because, as Fish reflects on his parents' fear of whites, he feels compelled to judge blacks in the same way that he feels whites do: He was beginning to look at his people through alien eyes and what he saw evoked in him a distance between himself and his people that baffled and worried him. One thing he now knew: the real reality of the lives of his people was negated; the real world lay over there somewhere--in a place where white people lived, people who had the power to say who could or could not live and on what terms; and the world in which his family lived was a kind of shadow world. (87) Hence, a foundation of Fish's internalization and inferiorization is, in great part, his parents' failure to try to pass on an adequate understanding of racial victimization and hatred to their son. In the story of Fish, Wright illustrates the complex psychological dynamics of how and why some black people manifest a self-alienated hatred of other blacks which results from their internalization of whites' hatred of blacks, filtered, in Fish's case, through his parents, especially Tyree. Moreover, that Fish represents the perils of internalization is clear in Wright's feelings about the meaning of Fishbelly's name: explaining the meaning of the fact that, as one of Fish's friends states, the stomach of a fish is white, Wright clearly uses the nickname to reflect Fishbelly's almost complete psychological immersion in and acceptance of the values of white society ( Kinnamon and Fabre 1993, 205). The depth of Fish's corruption is the crux of what Wright wants to critique in his character. Fish's inferiorized psychological state is an especially haunting and tragic aspect of the novel. The extent of Fish's debilitated sense of selfworth and his internalization of white racism is shown in what is, perhaps, the most powerful scene in the novel. In a central incident, Fish and a friend are arrested by the police for trespassing. While they are riding in the police car on the way to the station, Fish remembers that in his billfold he has a picture of a white woman in her underwear that he had torn from a newspaper. Aware that Chris was killed because of his involvement with a white woman (and of his father's feeling that Chris deserved to die), Fish thinks the police might kill him if they find the picture. In order to destroy the picture, he eats it: "Yes, he had eaten it; it was inside of him now, a part of him, invisible. . . . [H]e felt guilty in a way that they [the police] could never imagine or understand" ( Wright 1958, 152-53). This passage demonstrates that the internalization of white values and white racism can become an insurmountable and inextricable part of a black person's being. According to Robert Felgar, " Wright implies in The Long Dream and elsewhere that the worst emasculation of the blacks by the whites takes place above the eyes rather than below the belt; for Fishbelly is all too ready to accept white culture's definition of him as a nonman, a 'nigger.'" It is no wonder that, after Fish is arrested, he longed hotly for the sanctuary of his Black Belt, for the protection of familiar black faces; but, while yearning for his absent world, he knew that that world had lost its status and importance in his life. The world he now saw was the real one: that other world in which he had been born and in which he had lived was a listless shadow and already he was ashamed of its feebleness, of the bane of fear under which it lived, labored, hungered, and died. ( Wright 1958, 147-48) This psychological castration is depicted further in the internalization and self-hatred exhibited by Fish and his friends. That Wright changes the focus from Fish's parents to his companions is important in showing, as Clark indicates, that black children's racial attitudes are first influenced by their parents and then reinforced by their peer group ( Clark 1955, 57). In The Long Dream, one reason for the boys' low self-esteem is their ignorance about their racial heritage--certainly a fault of the dominant society, the educational system, and their parents as products of the first two factors. According to Clark, As children develop an awareness of racial differences and of their racial identity, they also develop an awareness and acceptance of the prevailing social attitudes and values attached to race and skin color. . . . Another important discovery is that these young children begin to develop techniques for selfprotection in an effort to cope with developing racial conflicts and threats to the personality. ( 1955, 46) Unfortunately, the protective strategy used by Fish and his friends seems to be scorn for blacks and acceptance of their marginalized status. These factors are part of Wright's intention in the novel to show that America keeps blacks on the periphery of American life, both physically and psychologically, unlike most white immigrants who can become assimilated into the mainstream of the society. Wright clearly believed that this rejection of blacks by the dominant society could result in feelings of self-rejection ( Kinnamon and Fabre 1993, 194). The consequence of this experience is dramatized in the alienation of Fish and his friends from both their African and American heritages. This internalized bigotry toward and estrangement from blacks is shown in several scenes involving Fish and his friends. For example, when Sam says that his father believes that blacks should go to Africa, Zeke says, "Sam wants us to git naked and run wild and eat with our hands and live in mud huts!" ( Wright 1958, 41). Compounding this alienation from their African heritage is their alienation from American life and the society in which they live. Talking about Jim Crow laws with their friends, Sam says, "You can't live like no American, cause you ain't no American! And you ain't African neither! So what is you? Nothing! Just nothing" (41-42). Adding to the boys' alienation is their feeling that being black is a punishment. Fish, for instance, in response to Sam's statement that "to white folks, you a nigger," says, "That's only cause some of us acts bad" (42). Clearly, Fish believes that some blacks deserve to be considered "niggers" and accepts the validity of racist standards in judging blacks. Another example of this belief that racism is something that blacks earn appears in the riot after Chris's lynching. Though Fish does not know the cause of the riot, he asks if blacks have caused trouble, "accepting guilt before he knew the facts" (81). These feelings are illuminated in Clark discussion of "The Negro Child and Race Prejudice" in Prejudice and Your Child: As minority-group children learn the inferior status to which they are assigned and observe that they are usually segregated and isolated from the more privileged members of their society, they react with deep feelings of inferiority and with a sense of personal humiliation. Many of them become confused about their own personal worth. Like all other human beings, they require a sense of personal dignity and social support for positive selfesteem. Almost nowhere in the larger society, however, do they find their own dignity as human beings respected and protected. Under these circumstances, minority-group children develop conflicts with regard to their feelings about themselves and about the value of the group with which they are identified. Understandably they begin to question whether they themselves and their group are worthy of no more respect from the larger society than they receive. These conflicts, confusions, and doubts give rise under certain circumstances to self-hatred and rejection of their own group. ( 1955, 63-64) Bleak as this picture may be, The Long Dream seems to be the novelistic counterpart to Clark's psychological theories. Fish comes to feel that "the Black Belt was a kind of purgatory, a pit of shame to which he had been unjustifiably consigned" after witnessing his parents' fear of whites and knowing about his father's dependence on them ( Wright 1958, 220). Thus, Fish and his friends interpret racial victimization to be the penalties that result from being black, and this ultimately makes them feel that being black is, in itself, a punishment. According to Clark, [V]arious studies and interpretations contribute to an understanding of the problem of self-hatred among Negroes. . . . [S]elf-rejection begins to occur at an early age and becomes embedded in the personality. This self-rejection is part of the total pattern of ideas and attitudes that American Negro children learn from the larger society. It demonstrates the power of the prevailing attitudes, and their influence on the individual even when these attitudes run counter to his need for self-esteem. Self-hatred is found among individuals who belong to any group that is rejected or relegated to an inferior status by the larger society. . . . The barriers against assimilation are more formidable for the Negro child and are further complicated by the fact that everyone can see his color. ( 1955, 50) This passage demonstrates that the flawed psychology of the blacks in Wright's novel has its genesis in the dominant society, which should prevent readers from thinking that the sole responsibility for black self-hatred rests with blacks themselves. The Long Dream, therefore, emphasizes the complicated and convoluted nature of the reasons for and manifestations of the internalization of white racism by blacks. This very complex theme of self-hatred and hostility toward other blacks is continued in the novel by the depiction of Fish's and his friends' hatred of blacks in powerless situations. For instance, as the boys play a game at a fair, Hit the Nigger Head," the object of which is to hit a black man in the face with a ball, the boys' shame at the helplessness of the man who is the object of the game is greater than their anger at the whites who are responsible for the game ( Wright 1958, 57). Wright emphasizes that the boys identify with the man and see him as a symbol of blacks in general. Thus, Fish's hatred of the man and his desire to play the game show his--and many blacks'--dilemma: "That obscene black face was his own and, to quell the war in his heart, he had to either reject it in hate or accept it in love. It was easier to hate that degraded black face than to love it" (57). This rejection is precisely what is dramatized in Fish's friends, in Fish himself, and in Fish's home situation: shame at and hatred of blacks' inferiorized position in a racist society, causing feelings of worthlessness, self-hatred, and hostility toward other blacks. A key aspect of Wright's portrayal of self-hatred and intraracial hostility in The Long Dream is the combined internalized racism and sexism Fish and his friends have toward black women. In presenting this theme, Wright reveals the characters' debased self-images and acceptance of the dominant society's values in the contrast of the boys' attitudes toward white women and black women. In a statement that reveals the relationships among the internalization of racism, self-rejection, and the sexist rejection of black women, Wright declared that, in the novel, he wanted to show that the media's promotion of the image of white women can result in some blacks internalizing the view of white women as both the pinnacle of eroticism and forbidden objects whose attraction lies in part in their off-limits status ( Kinnamon and Fabre 1993, 198). Reflecting the white woman's status as "lynch bait" in the old South, Wright conveys the idea that an exaggerated status gave white women a powerful psychological status to many black men, perhaps representing the blacks' own relative powerlessness--a powerlessness for which blacks futilely attempt to be compensated, Wright seems to suggest, by the desire for and attainment of a white woman. Several instances illustrate how Wright dramatizes these concerns in the novel. When Fish and his friends go to the fair, for example, they feel "excitement" and they are "entranced" when they come upon a show where seminude white women are dancing ( Wright 1958, 53). The boys are turned away from the show, but when they go to a show where black women are dancing, no mention is made of their being excited. Wright describes the black girls as "dancing trancelike" whereas the white dancers are described as "dancing swayingly," thus emphasizing their sensuality and appeal for the boys (53). The denigration of black women in the mind of Fish and his friends outlasts their adolescence and seems to be an essential part of their psyches when they become adults. Wright underscores the denigration of black women by Fish and his friends in a scene where the young men are flirting with black women, and Fish is attracted to the "near white" Gladys (220). Both she and the "yellow" one, Beth, are asked to dance while the "black girl," Maybelle, is ignored by the men; and Wright states ominously, "the cause was clear" (228). Wright describes Maybelle as having "thick lips," "bulbous eyes," and a "sweating black face" (230). Fish feels ashamed when Maybelle becomes angry and lashes out at him and his friends for ignoring her because they are attracted to women whose features are more Caucasian than hers; he is ashamed because he knows she is right. Wright, therefore, shows how color prejudice against black women is part of a larger psychological complex which has its foundation in the internalization of bigotry. Wright also uses this theme to show in Fish that if one rejects oneself, one will also reject others who remind one of oneself; if they hold a mirror to the features--and the identity--self-alienated blacks want to escape. Similar to Wright's illustration of the intraracial prejudice discussed above is a section of the novel that was no doubt inspired by the author's own experience in the South (described in Black Boy) when he worked for an insurance agent. Here, Fish disdains many of the blacks he meets while collecting rent for his father. Wright calls attention to the "greasy black fingers," "flattened brown nose," (268) and "kinky, greasy tufts of hair of some of the tenants" (262). Fish's disgust is so strong that even Tyree has to tell him to hide his critical attitude. ( Wright's point here seems to be that, in the multigenerational cycle of internalized racism, bigotry can become even stronger when passed from parent to child.) Nevertheless, Wright illustrates that one can superimpose one's own bigoted preconceptions onto the targets of one's bigotry when Fish feels that his negative prejudices of blacks are confirmed by his encounters. He states, for example, that he has learned by being exposed to his father's tenants that blacks are "sick" and that "[t]hese niggers are walking around in their sleep" (270). Commenting on Fish's disdain for blacks, Wright emphasizes how far Fish's internalization of white racist views of blacks has alienated him from the black race: "[T]he outlook of that alien [white] world had spoiled his own for him. Grudgingly, accepting being classed with his people, he was, deep in him, somewhat afraid of them; though he spoke their language, shared their pleasures and sorrows, there was in him some element that stood aside as though in shame" (270). Ironically, Fish's relationship with Gladys and others to whom he turns as a result of his rejection of blackness intensifies his own self-consciousness and shame at being black. Similar to Bigger's discomfort when in the car with Mary, Fish, when he is with Gladys, "could almost feel the crown of hair on his head, hair that was straightened, and he was ashamed of it. 'Bet she sure loves that damned hair of hers,' he growled silently to himself" (280). Moreover, an incident that takes place on the plane when he is leaving the country again shows that he is attracted to white women and, consequently, is repelled by his own black skin. Of the blonde flight attendant, Wright states that Fish "let her strap him into the seat of the plane, holding his breath as he watched her head of golden hair, her white skin. . . . Finally [when he looks at another woman) he stared directly at the object that rested under that dreadful taboo. . . . [S]he had a head full of luxuriant, dark brown hair, the wispy curls of which nestled clingingly at the nape of her white, well-modeled neck" (523-25). This is certainly a far cry from the "kinky, greasy tufts of hair . . . [that has to be] killed . . . [to] make it straight, straight like the hair of white folks" (262). Fish's attraction to whites is not merely sexual. When he is sitting next to a white man on the plane, he notices the man's hand and stares. Then, "Unconsciously, stealthily, Fishbelly drew his hand in, covering his right black hand with his left black hand, trying vainly to blot out the shameful blackness on him". The rejection of blackness that Fish had directed outward (in ignoring Maybelle, in preferring Gladys, in rejecting his parents, and in being disdainful toward the tenants) is, when he is with Gladys and with whites, directed inward, for in comparing himself to them, he comes to the same conclusion as he had when he and his friends compared Maybelle to the lighter-skinned girls: blackness, whether his own or others', is inferior. Clark lends validity to this aspect of the tragedy related by Wright, As the Negro observes the society in which he lives, he associates whiteness with superior advantage, achievement, progress, and power, all of which are essential to successful competition in the American culture. The degree of whiteness that the individual prefers may be considered an indication of the intensity of his anxiety and of his need to compensate for what he considers to be the deficiencies of his own skin color. ( 1955, 49) In Fish, Wright delineates a mentality that is trapped in a cycle of selfhatred, aspiring toward ever-elusive whiteness. Mirroring Adam's analysis of self-rejection as a result of this internalization of racism, Wright states, Fishbelly hotly rejected the terms in which white people weighed him or saw him, for those terms made him feel agonizingly inferior; then, in his acting against the feeling of inferiority, he had to try to be like them in order to prove to himself and to them that he was not inferior. Yet in his trying to be like them he was trapping himself. ( 1958, 282) This passage is, in fact, a bit confusingly written. Fish does not "reject" the whites' view of him; he believes that whites constitute the "real world" and that blacks are mere "shadows." Furthermore, in addition to Fish's earlier acceptance of white racist standards in evaluating blacks, the belief that he must "try to be like" whites to prove his equality makes it evident that he accepts, rather than rejects, their view of blacks. Ironically, therefore, his intense desire to repudiate the racist view of blacks causes him to implant his belief of how racist whites perceive blacks in his mind and, consequently, to validate their prejudiced image of blacks as the standard for judging them. Clark's example of the cycle expressed by Wright in The Long Dream brings home the tragic complexity of internalized racism: The problem of self-hatred among Negroes must be understood as one aspect of the pattern of feelings and attitudes of minority-group members toward all other members of the society which relegates them to an inferior and humiliating status. Self-hatred is not an isolated phenomenon. It cannot be understood in terms only of the minority-group member's reactions to other members of his group. . . . As he learns from the whites the stereotypes about himself which form the substance of his self-hatred, he begins at the same time to resent the whites for imposing this stigma upon him. If there are to be significant changes in the Negro's attitude toward himself, these changes can only come from positive changes in the way in which the larger society views and treats the Negro. ( 1955, 51) Though Clark's proposed solution to the problem of self-hatred may seem to some to be overly dependent on a change in whites' attitudes, perhaps Wright's novel attests to the psychological dependence on whites some blacks have regarding their self-esteem and, consequently, their estimation of other blacks. In any case, Clark's repeated call for a change in the fabric of race relations in American society in order to improve blacks' material and psychological lives finds strong validation in the psychological shambles Wright describes in The Long Dream and elsewhere. In a passage similar to the controversial one in Black Boy about blacks' deficiencies, Wright states that Fish began to realize dimly that there was something missing in him. . . . There was some quality of character that the conditions under which he had lived had failed to give him. . . . Other than a self-satisfying yen for imitating the standards of the white world above him, there had not come within the range of his experience any ideal that could have captured his imagination. Other than a defensive callousness toward his own people . . . other than the masked behavior he had adopted toward the whites . . . he had no traditions, no mores to sustain him. ( 1958, 492) Having a distorted view of his own heritage, seeing blacks mainly in situations in which they are powerless and being a part of a society whose media promote white women as desirable make Fish believe in the allure of the white world and make him reject the world of blacks. In a sense, what is "missing" is a view of the world that is more inclusive than this one. Thus, it seems that the characters in The Long Dream, and many of Wright's other characters, no matter how resentful they are of whites are, at bottom, envious of them. Summing up the complexity of Fish's feelings, Wright states, "When he thought of that white world he hated it, but when he daydreamed of it, he loved it . . . he revered that white world and . . . [held] toward it an attitude of mute awe" (238). Like Bigger, who fantasizes that perhaps Mary Dalton will be like a woman he has seen in a movie and who plays games with his friends in which they pretend they are white (as do the boys in The Long Dream), Fish does not want so much to eradicate the white power structure as to attain the image and lifestyle of the dominant society. The depth of Wright's understanding of the impact of the internalization of prejudice and self-rejection certainly grew throughout his life. In The Long Dream, for example, Wright analyzes the sort of alienation from blacks he himself had voiced in Black Boy. An important indication of Wright's increased understanding and his ability to portray the problem of self-rejection is that the passage in which Fish uses whites as a measuring stick for blacks' self-worth and the self-hatred that results are a far cry from the comparative simplicity of the way in which the theme is handled in Lawd Today, with Jake's childish admiration of gangsters, for example. Thus, those who dismiss The Long Dream as a mere rehash of Wright's old theme of Southern racism and consider the book a failure fail to realize the newness of the book in Wright's increased perception in this very important regard. Considering the psychological complex of which self-hatred is a part, Clark states that in order to effect a change in blacks' material and psychological status, whites must change in their attitudes and behavior toward blacks. How is this idea reflected in Wright's novels and how does it illustrate his view of the white image in the black mind? Perhaps the answer to this question lies in the fact that Wright again and again writes about white characters who are the only ones who understand the black protagonist, even while these black characters remain estranged from other blacks, underlining the uniqueness of the relationship between blacks and sympathetic whites. In Native Son, for instance, an obvious example of Wright's use of these figures is Max, Bigger's lawyer, who gains Bigger's trust to the point that Bigger shares his feelings about his life with Max. Furthermore, Jan's visit to Bigger in jail also shows Wright's use of an extraordinarily understanding white character. Jan, whom Bigger had tried to frame for Mary's death, says to the man who killed his girlfriend: "I--I don't want to worry you Bigger. . . . I'm not angry and I want you to let me help you. I don't blame you for trying to blame this thing on me. . . . [I]t would be asking too much to ask you not to hate me, when every white man hates you. . . . Though this thing has hurt me, I got something out of it. . . . It taught me that it's your right to hate me. . . . I was in jail grieving for Mary and then I thought of all the black men who've been killed, the black men who had to grieve when their people were snatched from them in slavery and since slavery. I thought that if they could stand it, then I ought to. . . . I said, 'I'm going to help that guy if he lets me.'" ( Wright 1940, 266-68) A similarly strange scene occurs in The Long Dream, when, in response to Tyree's attempted justification of his criminal activities, MacWilliams, the reform politician, responds, "Your people have been terribly provoked. There was slavery and then there was hate on the part of the white man for the freed slave. Then your people began to adjust to an unjust situation. . . . Your excuse is valid" ( Wright 1958, 376-77). Thus, like Jan's forgiveness of Bigger, MacWilliams absolves Tyree of responsibility for his actions and has complete sympathy for him. Finally, in The Outsider, the hunchbacked district attorney, Houston, identifies with and articulates the plight of the protagonist, Cross. Houston's empathy for Cross is evident when he tells him that he is, like Cross and blacks in general, an outsider because of his deformity. Also, like Max in Native Son, Houston voices the protagonist's reasons for his crimes. Cross has committed two murders out of his hatred of tyrannical authority figures. Houston understands completely Cross's motivation for killing these two power mongers--his desire to assert his own power and autonomy--"Man desires ultimately to be a god. Man desires to be everything. You felt that what obstructed desire could be killed." An understanding white figure is found in each of these three novels that span the entirety of Wright's novelistic career. There is an important difference, however, between Max in Native Son and the other two characters. In Native Son, Bigger was a man who could not articulate the meaning of his life and crimes until the end of the novel. In fact, in How Bigger Was Born," Wright states that "due to American educational restrictions . . . the bulk of the Negro population . . . is not yet articulate" ( 1940, xx). Max, therefore, is a justifiable if, at times, incredible mouthpiece. Yet, Max ultimately does not truly understand Bigger, for when Bigger, in their last meeting, validates the positive meaning of his crimes, Max is horrified. As Robert Felgar points out, Disoriented by Bigger's proto-Existentialist affirmation and emotionally involved with him enough to hope Bigger can become one with himself before his death, Max is disappointed that Bigger will not substitute his individualist world-view for a Marxist vision. Whereas Max feels that Bigger could find serenity by accepting the fact that he is largely a result of a horribly racist environment, Bigger . . . cannot accept that he is merely a byproduct. It is as a social statistic, then, that Bigger is comprehensible to Max: but as an individual, he is too nightmarish a figure for his lawyer to accept. ( 1980, 93) Jan is the character who most truly accepts Bigger, for he sympathizes with Bigger's criminality and hostility. In The Outsider, in contrast to Jan and Max, Houston seems a superfluous character, for he is not needed as a spokesman for an inarticulate character. Cross has, after all, studied philosophy at the University of Chicago and is acutely articulate about his motives. In fact, his analysis of the murders occurs nearly two hundred pages before Houston's (230). Why, then, does Wright use this technique of having a white character who is the protagonist's kindred spirit in three of his novels? One possible answer is provided in How Bigger Was Born." Here, Wright states that he was concerned with "the possibilities of alliances between the American Negro and other people possessing a kindred consciousness" ( 1940, xv). Clearly, Wright intended Jan and Max in Native Son, MacWilliams in The Long Dream, and Houston in The Outsider to make clear the possibility that whites could come to understand the experiences of blacks, instead of dismissing them through the blindness of racism. Still, this technique has problems--the main one is its incredibility. In Native Son, for example, it is hard to believe that a man whose girlfriend has been killed and who then has been framed for her murder would act so humbly and even apologetically toward the man who was responsible for these acts. The same is true of the reaction of MacWilliams--the honest man who wants to fight corruption--to Tyree's long list of illegal activities. Furthermore, not only is Houston's role as spokesman for Cross's true motives heavy-handed, it is also a contrivance, to the point of ludicrousness, that Houston should tell Cross that he has insight into the plight of blacks as outsiders because he, as a hunchback, is an outsider. Scenes like this contribute to what Robert Bone has called the "curious unreality" that sometimes mars Wright's work. Another interesting aspect of the "alliance between kindred souls" is that blacks in Wright's novels achieve this unity only with whites and never with other blacks. Bigger, as mentioned earlier, is estranged from his family from the beginning of the novel. Moreover, after killing Mary, he feels "cut off from . . . [his friends] forever" ( Wright 1940, 102). After Bigger is jailed, although his family and friends visit him, only Jan and Max are capable of giving him meaningful emotional support. Similarly, in The Outsider, only with his white mistress, Eva, and with Houston, is Cross able to have relationships that are meaningful to him. To Cross, his family and his black mistress, Dot, are mere burdens. Furthermore, it is only with Houston that he shares the lessons he has learned from his life of crime and deception: "I wish I had some way to give the meaning of my life to others. . . . To make a bridge from man to man. . . . Tell them not to come down this road" ( Wright 1953, 439). Estranged from everyone else, Cross feels that Houston is the only one with whom he has enough of an emotional bond to try to convey the meaning of his life. Perhaps one factor in Wright's use of this technique is that it shows characters who are the opposite of the racist structure that Wright describes in which whites are felt by blacks to be a force that demands blacks to act in accordance with the dictates of racism and that negates their individuality. Sennett's comments also shed light on this device of employing a white character who alone understands the black character's motives. According to Sennett, "Someone who is indifferent arouses our desire to be recognized; we want this person to feel we matter enough to be noticed. We may provoke or denounce him, but the point is to get him to respond" ( 1980, 86). Clearly, Wright's motive in writing Native Son was to make people respond. When reviews of . . . [ Uncle Tom's Children] began to appear, I realized I had made an awfully naive mistake. I found that I had written a book which even bankers' daughters could read and weep over and feel good about. I swore to myself that if I ever wrote another book, no one would weep over it; that it would be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears. ( Wright 1940, xviii) In addition to wanting to confront white readers with the plight of blacks, perhaps Wright created Jan and Max--like their counterparts in other novels--to represent his hope that at least some whites could change from being a negative force ruining blacks' lives to being fellow human beings who could empathize with blacks. This technique of creating white characters with whom the black protagonists have a meaningful relationship can also be illuminated by Sennett's discussion of the "bonds of rejection" ( 1980, 86). As Sennett explains this concept, when one is confronted with an authority figure who refuses to recognize one, A struggle for recognition is set up. . . . [T]he inferior person is bidding for recognition. . . . [H]e wants to be seen as a person by . . . [the authority figure]. . . . This play between recognition and indifference is how the knot [connecting the authority figure and the person under him] tightens. The superior person remains in control of the apparatus of recognition; his or her attention is the prize of disruption. (102) Perhaps Wright's writings reflect, then, the author's own psychological "bonds of rejection," for three of his novels emphasize the centrality of a black person's being recognized and understood by whites, to the complete detriment of fictional credibility and in the face of the total absence of meaningful relationships with other blacks. In stressing the importance of the protagonists' recognition by whites, Wright shows traces of the mentality he wrote about in Twelve Million Black Voices. "In the main, we are different from other folk in that . . . [b]efore we black folk can move, we must first look into the white man's mind to see what is there, to see what he is thinking" ( 1978, 164). Consequently, Wright's representation of sympathetic whites is not the liberating move that Clark may have had in mind when he spoke about the need for whites to change in order to improve the condition of blacks. It is, instead, a sign of Wright's own psychological chains to whites, for to him they are the requirement for blacks' psychological connection to the human race. Hence, the whites in the eyes of Richard Wright betray the author's own internalization and inferiorization. It is now time to return to some of the basic issues presented in the opening pages of this chapter. Can one, for example, find the celebratory element in the novels under discussion that Baker states is characteristic in Wright's works? Is Wright to be condemned for revealing and, at times, exhibiting inadvertently black self-rejection and the "bonds of rejection"? To return to a fundamental consideration of this study as a whole, can the representation of a lingering pathological or neurotic condition in the psychology of some blacks constitute a liberating mythology? Readers will certainly answer these questions for themselves. I have only provisional interpretations to offer, not solutions. If there is a celebratory aspect to the works by Wright under discussion, it is to be found outside of the texts. The degree to which Wright helps readers to understand the complex psychological problems of internalization and the dilemmas that blacks face when they place an excessive amount of importance on whiteness is an important, potentially liberating, and, therefore, celebratory element for readers, whether they suffer from, perpetuate, or merely observe the psychological conditions discussed in the novels. Thus, if one understands the concept of celebration in this context not to mean an infantile state of gratification but to entail the positive aspect of a work introducing readers to such harsh truths, we can find merit in Baker's dissenting message. |