Wright's Black Boy Ch. 9 and 10

Life does not improve for Wright as he grows older. In fact, as a young adult he was treated with more contempt than ever before. At another job that he accepted at a store, he witnessed the mafia-like punishments his boss inflicts on the black people who do not pay their bills. In another instance, Wright accepted a ride from a car-full of white boys when they offered him a seat when they saw his bike was broken. When then declines an offered bottle of whiskey, he is immediately thrown out of the car and asked, "Nigger, ain't you learned no better sense'n that yet?- Ain't you learned to say sir to a white man yet?" (Wright 200).  From this experience Wright muses, "I was learning rapidly how to watch white people, to observe their every move, every fleeting expression, how to interpret what was said and what was left unsaid," Wright 200.

Wright has the chronic problem of being in need of a job. When his friend points out that he has never been able to hold steady to a job, Wright makes himself believe that he needs to "break himself," like a horse that needs to be broken in. Looking at his employment history, he thinks that he needs to finally begin to learn how to interact with whites so that he can at least get by, at least hold onto a job. 

Wright gets a job at an optical factory that is run by a man from the north. He is especially excited because the owner, Mr. Crane, says that he will train him in how to make glasses. All Wright wants is to be skilled in something, learn a trade, and make a living that has more meaning than menial, brainless work. Though both Mr. Crane and Wright are optimistic about the business venture, the other white workers resent Wright and his desire to learn. They eventually bully him out, cornering him and forcing him to admit to a minute mistake that he did not actually commit.  Wright is left, yet again jobless and confused on how he unknowingly, yet continually pisses off white people.

He concludes that, "My words were innocent enough, but they indicated, it seemed, a consciousness on my part that infuriated white people" (Wright 215). Even the smallest, most innocent phrases that Wright could utter could send a white man into a frenzy. Wright is unable to curb this 'habit' because he unknowingly responds in ways that make him seem more than just an ignorant idiot that Southern whites demand all blacks to be. "I  began to marvel at how smoothly the black boys acted out the roles that the white race had mapped out for them" (Wright 216). Wright is for some reason, not able to fit the mold that his peers so easily assume. 

Wright finally figures out how the white man is able to contrive the deep-set mentality and life style that blacks and whites take on in the south. He sees how blacks works for whites, bow their heads and act dumb and passive in their presence, but when the whites turn around, they steal from them to get by. The whites punish this, but Wright observes how in a way, whites also promote it as a way to enslave blacks further into the role they want them to stay in. 

But I, who stole nothing, who wanted to look them straight in the face, who wanted to talk and act like a man, inspired fear in them. The southern whites would rather have had Negroes who stole, work for them than Negroes who knew, however dimly, the worth of their own humanity. Hence, whites placed a premium upon black deceit; they encouraged irresponsibility; and their rewards were bestowed upon us blacks in the degree that we could make them feel safe and superior. Wright 219.

By the end of the chapter, Wright is hired at a theater and cooperates with his co-workers in a scheme to steal money from the white owner. They succeed, but the guilt Wright experiences following his first major act of thievery leaves him sick and unwilling to do such an act again. With the money he resolves to leave the south, deeming it a land that he could never prosper in because of his awareness and intellect, qualities he cannot stifle.