James Baldwin

In Native Son, we see how the self-identification of Bigger affected him and his whole life, how the self-hatred form inside of oneself can turn into something sinister. This relays a different perspective from the Moon & Mars. This book is about a little girl who just sees her family. She is the first to be born out of slavery and the center of attention. The book (at least the parts I read) shows the importance of family and honoring differences, not just similarities. That being said, It is not to be said that it is easy. After meeting with the author of the book I felt a lot of things. I felt a relation to her. Being mixed, in a time like that could not have been easy. Being mixed in today’s world is not the easiest thing.

In a society where labeling has become the most important thing, being mixed is not easy. I feel it almost every day. I am currently filling out job descriptions and every time I do, I check the box that says ‘two or more races’. That box, makes me think about what it truly means to be mixed in a world that for so long wanted to keep things separated. It makes me think about the earlier article we read in which, we talked about choosing to be white when people first moved to the U.S. They did not do this for no reason at all, they did it to survive. The U.S. was a place in which being white was the main factor of survival. It was a way to be able to survive in a place where people who ‘different’ were outcasted.

For me, growing up mixed has been an interesting thing. From high school, I have been going PWIs without a second thought. I have been told I am too white and I have been told that I am too black. Yet, for some reason, I have always just felt like I am me. There are fronts I put up of course, for reasons that are not just due to race, but in a world where everyone has to be labeled as something, where does that leave the people who are more than just one identity? For me personally, it has left me in a place of slowly, but surely making my own identity that has always excluded race. I am an athlete, granddaughter, sister, daughter, friend… Yet, in a world where it is so hard to include yourself when you are born in a place where you never quite fit in, how do you find your identity any other way?

“How Bigger Was Born” is Wright’s attempt to explain to the reader his motives for writing such a gruesome novel. It is hard to believe that the world he creates for Bigger is respectable. His childhood serves as the main factor into his perspective on the experience of black men in America. He claims that he knew several “Biggers” and the one in Native Son is an accumulation of the black men that he watched meet unfortunate endings. In trying to understand his reasons for writing Native Son, he fails to convince me that writing it was “an exciting, enthralling, and even a romantic experience” (461). He argues that black men being accused of rape is “a representative symbol of the Negro’s uncertain position in America” (455). I find this claim to be flawed because Bigger did rape Bessie and wasn’t even charged for rape in the novel. Further, he states that after writing Native Son he started another novel on the status of women in modern America. Wright’s focus on this aspect of the criminalization of black men is concerning, when he claims that he wrote the novel to free himself from a sense of shame and fear that comes from being black in America. In the end Bigger is not really freed from this sense of shame and hate. He buried it under the euphoria he experienced from murder. One of the most striking arguments he presents is that he “was fascinated by the similarity of the emotional tensions of Bigger in America and Bigger in Nazi Germany and Bigger in old Russia. All Bigger Thomases, white and black, felt tense, afraid, nervous, hysterical, and restless” (446). This comparison took me away from the Bigger portrayed in the novel as a person and led me to looking at Bigger as an idea apart from race; a dangerous one. He states, “The difference between Bigger’s tensity and the German variety is that Bigger’s, due to America’s educational restrictions on the bulk of her Negro population, is in a nascent state, not yet articulate. And the difference between Bigger’s longing for self-identification and the Russian principle of self-determination is that Bigger’s, due to the effects of American oppression, which has not allowed for the forming of deep ideas of solidarity among Negroes, is still in a state of individual anger and hatred. Here, I felt, was drama! Who will be the first to touch off these Bigger Thomases in America, white and black?” (447). How is the reader supposed to believe that Bigger is merely a product of his environment when his persona is based on extreme ideals. I am still trying to figure out where I stand with this book and “Everybody’s Protest Novel” brings a little clarity. Baldwin states, “For Bigger’s tragedy is not that he is cold or black or hungry, not even that he is American, black; but that he has accepted a theology that denies him life, that he admits the possibility of his being subhuman and feels constrained, therefore, to battle for his humanity according to those brutal criteria bequeathed him at his birth” (18). Further, “The failure of the protest novel lies in its rejection of life, the human being…” (18). Native Son is a life-draining novel and reflects the depressing state of the war stricken world during the time it was written in. 

Wright’s How Bigger Was Born section of Native Son is remarkably in line with a good amount of the critiques brought up in class and in previous reflections. I was particularly interested to see if Wright would address or anticipate some of those critiques. He does, and in doing so, Wright revealed what I think is a very prevalent theme in how Native Son is presented.

Wright completely dismisses any opinion contrary to his own. Several sections of How Bigger Was Born were particularly striking, namely “I felt with all of my being that he was more important than what any person, white or black, would say or try to make of him” (450). That is Wright’s only addressal of the complaint that he paints a bleak picture of Black identity. That is a woefully inadequate position, because Wright seems to be dismissing the very experience of the reader, which is, in basic terms, the point of writing a character. “They did not want people, especially white people, to think that their lives were so much as touched by anything so dark and brutal as Bigger” (449-450) is another claim Wright makes about issues the Black community might have with Native Son. But he doesn’t go any further. Wright makes no claim and records no thought about what effect that might have on the reader. Which, once again, is the purpose of writing a book. Telling a story that affects a reader, whether purposefully or not. I think that is why Native Son seems somewhat inconclusive as well. Several of us in class asked the question: so what? Where do we go from here? What’s the point of portraying Bigger this way? Wright explains how but not why, which leads the story and the explanation to seem somewhat inadequate.  Wright also completely dismisses any notion of Black pride or culture with the simple line, “Still others projected their hurts and longings into more naive and mundane forms–blues, jazz, swing–and, without intellectual guidance, tried to build up a compensatory nourishment for themselves” (439). Once again, Wright offers no clarification as to why this is bad, why such forms are “naive”, or why Bigger’s lens on Black America is more apt. Finally, Wright makes not a single reference to the role of women in Bigger’s life. The seldom times he mentions rape, which is a massive part of Native Son, he solely discusses rape in the context of its connotations for Black men, which are undoubtedly present, but is entirely dismissive of women. This explanation reaffirms conclusions about Native Son: Wright focuses the story with an incredibly narrow lens, that not only highlights a very particular approach to Blackness, but also dismisses any other approach to those topics.

Throughout book three of Native Son, all I could think about was identity. So often in the world, identity is found through other people. In this story, we see Bigger identified through a white lens. Bigger was called a ‘Negro Rapist’, ‘jungle beast’, and a ‘grinning southern darky’. Throughout Native Son, we have seen Bigger be labeled as something that is bad by not just others, but himself as well. The news, which is run by white people, is using their voice to dehumanize Bigger, as well as the rest of the black community. Warning them that they are not meant to be there, with all of their ‘freedom’.

In today’s society, black people are still identified by others. The news tends to cast a shadow of doubt over black people no matter the reason they are on. During the peak of the BLM movement, I can recall when there would be a black person who passed away or did something good for the community and a mug shot would be shown instead of a normal photo of them. This is a real and current example of how black people can be portrayed for not themselves, but the community as a whole. In 2014 there was a song released called Don’t Shoot by The Game and featuring many other black artists. The song came out directly after the Trayvon and Mike Brown shooting. There is a lyric that describes the situation that happens in not only Native Son but also in the real world. The lyric reads ‘News say we’re looting, paint pictures like we some animals’. This was undoubtedly true. During the BLM movements, protests, and demonstrations, the news would show the bad parts of those events, not the peaceful aspect.

The point I am trying to make is the importance of how we view ourselves. From the time we are born, people put identities on each other. Be it girl or boy, or by race, people will always put a label on something to make their understanding of things simple and easy. That being said, I believe that this is all tying back to how Bigger’s mother told him she never wanted to have him. Since childhood, he has had the identity in his head of being useless and unwanted. So, in a way, I do wonder if his committing such an awful crime was simply due to an underlying cause of wanting attention.

Book three of Wright’s Native Son is incredibly conflicting as Wright seems to change course from the first two books of the novel and attempts to humanize Bigger Thomas. Wright mainly does so by finally having Bigger give voice to his feelings at the end of the book as well as an extensive argument from Max on Bigger’s behalf. However, the most conflicting aspect of Native Son for me has been the concept of agency. Wright makes the point that Bigger was destined, hence the title Fate, by his environment and the nature of oppression in America to be imprisoned at least if not killed. Max puts the concept succinctly in saying, “We allowed Bigger Thomas nothing. He sought another life and accidentally found one” (398). Wright continually presents the reader with the assertion that the only means of agency for Bigger is murder. “[Bigger] accepted it because it made him free, gave him the possibility of choice, of action, the opportunity to act” (396). Bigger, along with the rest of the Black community, is fatefully driven towards violence. I do not agree with this assertion because the preponderance of fate cedes agency which is already limited by society. 

Wright paints an incredibly pessimistic picture of blackness, one that is dictated by oppression and violence. By no means do I contradict the weight of oppression and systemic hatred and racism, nor do I contradict the effect those have had on Black agency. Clearly, opportunity and agency in America is incredibly different, and continues to favor White people. It continues to disadvantage Black people, from redlining to voter suppression. But agency and blackness are not confined to violence, as Wright seems to argue in Native Son. 

I was listening to a group of rappers I follow closely (Coast Contra) and one of their pieces touched on pride in themselves, particularly the line “Stop, breathe, give and receive / Nowadays in mind, I stay align, I wake and meditate for space / Been taking time to make these rhymes in hope they elevate all our thoughts / Stop, breathe, give and receive” (Breathe and Stop Freestyle, 4:20 – 4:30). Ras Austin delves deeper into similar feelings of pressure, fear, and confusion later in the verse but still chooses to emphasize the pride in himself and his group for who they are and what they have done. As Black artists, this is a stark contrast to Wright’s depiction of blackness via Bigger Thomas. So while I think Wright excellently points out how systemic oppression and alienation make people feel, I disagree with Wright’s assertion that agency is accessible only through violence. 

I found the contrast between the colorful excerpts that describe the Dursley family and the rather reductive and simple descriptions of Cho Chang and Dean Thomas from the Harry Potter series to be quite eye-opening. This discussion regarding the use of color in writing left me wanting to further explore the racialization of language. How do we invoke race in writing and speaking? What are the consequences of the use of words like “black” on the people whom they describe and the English language itself? 

I found Richard Wright’s Native Son provides the perfect medium for exploring these questions. Throughout the book, Wright uses colors in multiple ways to describe race, physicality, and personality. For example, frustrated by Gus’ hesitancy to rob Blum’s store, Bigger calls his friend a “yellow black bastard” (28). Here, “yellow” is a derogatory reference to Gus’ lighter skin and his cowardice. This moment demonstrates the multiple meanings invoked by color. Beyond the use of color to denote physical appearance and character, Wright shows how racialized language links color to the notion of humanity. One way in which he accomplishes this is by bringing to the forefront our understanding of the word “black” not only to describe racial identity and skin color but also arouse many of the negative connotations and stereotypes associated with blackness, and, by extension, the race itself. Bessie describes Bigger as “plain black trouble” and herself as a “blind dumb black drunk fool” (230). She seems to have internalized the belief that her and Bigger’s blackness, and arguably the entire race to which they belong, is inextricably connected to these other disparaging adjectives. At the time of the trial, the Chicago Tribune notes that “though the Negro killer’s body does not seem compactly built… his skin is exceedingly black” (279). The paper suggests that despite the fact that Bigger lacks other features that might mark him as a criminal, his blackness is incriminatory enough. 

I argue that, through the use of racialized language, white people are afforded the complexity inherent to the use of multiple colors when describing them while nonwhites are reduced to nothing more than the single color of their skin. I am afraid that this is not a problem unique to writing– in our colloquial language, we too become authors who reinforce the normativity of whiteness when we refer to a white friend as “green-eyed brunette” while our nonwhite friend becomes “the tall Black girl.” It is hard to ignore the tragic irony that arises from this conclusion: whiteness, though defined as the absence of color, is often described the most colorfully, reinforcing the humanity of white people and denigrating that in blackness.