EXTRA CREDIT- Rothenberg (The Ethics of Living Jim Crow)

After slavery was abolished, rights among blacks and whites were still not equal. Richard White discusses his experiences growing up as a black child during this time. He had to learn several lessons the hard way and he eventually learned in order to get things he wanted such as an education, he would have to steel or lie. He learned from his mistakes and developed a true understanding of what the world he was growing up in was really like.
In Richard’s first job interview for an optical company, he talks about how he made sure to be polite to the boss by answering with “yessirs” and “nosirs.” He talks about how he realized his place during the interview and that his boss was white and he black. White talks about how he “had visions of ‘working his way up’” within his new job. Eventually he realized that would not happen anytime soon and that a black boy such as himself should never dream such things because they were unrealistic at the time. In White’s first job, he worked with two white men. At first, he thought they were all friends until they wouldn’t help Richard learn anything in his job and he realized they thought of him only as a black man and nothing more. These two white men felt threatened by White’s willingness to learn and then began to terrorize him. Richard was forced to leave his job because he was intimidated by the white men and felt inferior as well.
Throughout “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,” Richard goes through several jobs where he experiences discrimination throughout all of them. He got beaten or tormented for even looking at a white person the wrong way. Once White learned that if he wanted to develop an education, he would have to do it himself through lying or steeling. In order to get library books, White would write a note to the librarian stating that he was allowed to check out the books for a white man.
I could not imagine living in a society where such things took place. What if today’s society was still segregated like it used to be? When reading this, it made me feel horrible. I don’t know how I would be able to survive if I was treated the way Richard White was throughout his childhood and adolescence. I could not imagine living in fear all the time as they were forced to.