"It was alright to throw cinders. The greates harm a cinder could do was leave a bruise. But broken bottles were dangerous; they left you cut, bleeding, and helpess." (The ethics of living jim crow)
-Was it truly alright to throw cinders? What makes it ok for one child to hurt another, even if it is only a bruise. It is not ok to bruise other children as a form of playing. However, to Richard throwing cinders was ok because HE was the one throwing them and the bottles were dangerous because HE was left "cut, bleeding, and helpless." In actuality none of the children should have been playing wasr, but little Richard was beat not really for fighting with the other kids, but for fighting with the white children in the neighborhood. He needed to be taght that in the time of Jim Crow it was not ok even at a young age to try to fight the whites, it was dangerous hazrdous and forbidden.
Emmett Till
Murdered at 14 years old in Money, Mississippi. The spectacle surrounding Till's murder was one of the precipitating events leading to the Civil Rights Movement.
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3 comments:
You're like the adult Richard, the one who's writing the essay, when you look at the child Richard and see what's missing from his point of view--he's thinking that the white kids are being unfair by using more powerful weapons, but he's not understanding what the "war" is really about.
I agree with your statement, and to go back to the discussion in class you do make a great point, that none of the boys had the right to be throwing anything at anyone in the first place. And although the weapon of his enemy was greater, he still had to suffer the consequences for his actions.
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