Whiteness, Blackness, and Racism Theme Analysis

Native Son is a meditation on racial relations in 1930s Chicago, told from the perspective of Bigger Thomas, a young African-American man who, enraged at society, accidentally kills Mary Dalton, whose body he later burns in a furnace; and Bessie, his “girl.” The novel’s author, Richard Wright, drawing in part on his own experiences as an African-American male growing up in the South and moving to Chicago, describes the sensation of “blackness” from Bigger’s perspective. Bigger’s blackness, and the “whiteness” he encounters in large swaths of society, are not merely skin colors or racial barriers: they become, to Bigger and many others, symbolic distinctions between the morally fallen (blackness) and the morally pure (whiteness).

From the beginning of the novel, when hanging out with “the gang” (including Jack and G.H.), Bigger announces that he cannot pursue his dream of becoming an aircraft pilot, because African Americans in Chicago are not permitted or encouraged to gain even a basic education. Bigger is ashamed and angry when he first meets Mary, Jan, and the Dalton family—even Peggy, the Daltons’ head housemaid—because he senses that his blackness has led him into a position of servility to a white family. This, despite the fact that the Daltons wish to help Bigger (although to a limited extent, based on their own paternalistic understanding of African-American culture).

Mary and Jan truly wish to help Bigger—it is a component of their Communist ideology—but Bigger’s response, when asked to sit with, shake hands with, and eat with Jan and Mary, is to shrink back from them, out of a mixture of resentment, anger, and fear. The first part of the novel, then—leading up to Bigger’s murder of Mary—shows that Bigger’s understanding of his own blackness, and black culture, is determined primarily in relation to the city’s dominant white culture. Bigger views his own ethnic background with a kind of internalized racial lens—he has difficulty recognizing his own potential as a human being, and he takes an immediate dislike to those members of white society who attempt to help him.

The second part of the novel, Bigger’s trial, draws out more clearly these racial divides. Bigger and his trial have become the talk of the city, and a symbol of its racial troubles. The trial divides society starkly between those white citizens who wish to help Bigger—namely Max and Jan—and those who wish to do him harm, to punish him for his crime—namely, Buckley. Max and Jan wish to help Bigger, to treat him as a human being, and to explain, if not justify, his crime based on the harsh realities of life in the Black Belt. Bigger, at first, resents this help, but later learns to respect Max a great deal, and in the poignant final scene of the novel, after Bigger has been sentenced to die, Bigger thanks Max for recognizing his (Bigger’s) humanity—for helping him to feel that his own life is worth fighting for.

Buckley, on the other hand, refers to Bigger as an “ape,” and seems to relish the punishment meted out to Bigger. Thus Buckley, like many white members of the media establishment in the city, wants only an excuse to punish members of the African-American community—a community that Buckley views as “unproductive” and, at worst, capable of terrible crimes. The novel’s resolution provides little consolation for this unfairness. But there is a notable change that occurs: Bigger becomes aware, after his crime and through communication with Max over the course of the trial, that his internalized notions of the bleakness and powerlessness of black culture have been implanted in his psyche by a dominant white culture, one that does not recognize the humanity of the city’s black population. Although Bigger must die for his crimes—and he never repents for them—he has gained a degree of self-knowledge through which the reader, too, might come to terms with the US’s racial divide.