" That is one of the most common phrases in American society. There are many pressures out there, such as school, work, money, and family, with which everyone struggles. No matter who it is, everyone is under stress at one point or another. Life only gets harder and more stressful when you have to pretend to be something you are not. Not only is this notion stressful, but it is emotionally and mentally unhealthy. Another factor to include is to imagine you are someone of another race. Richard Wright writes his essay, "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow," on this very topic. Wright believes that to succeed, African Americans must learn to play a "double role" by appearing to be numb and unaffected by mistreatment, while also accepting pain and injury, and acting grateful to the White race to be alive. I believe that Wright is correct in his explanation of African Americans playing a double role to avoid being physically harmed or threatened. However, I also believe that, to some extent, everyone must play a double role in order to be successful.
In order to fully understand Wright's claim, you must understand his meaning of a double role. Although he never states this in his essay, Wright leads us to believe that a double role for an African American is playing into the stereotype of being a liar, a thief, and a brute. "Here my Jim Crow education assumed quite a different form. . . here I learned to lie, to steal, to dissemble. I learned to play that dual role which every Negro must play if he wants to eat and live," (599). Wright thinks that up until he begins his "other" role as a liar, thief, and brute, he was unsuccessful and taken advantage of.
Wright also believes that African Americans must accept injury and pain if it is inflicted by a white person. One example of a personal experience is a time when two white men he worked with at an optical company ganged up on him. "He was gripping a steel bar in his hands.
