NON-AFRICAN PROSE
RICHARD WRIGHT: Native Son
What is Max’s attitude towards racial relations in the novel?
Explanation
What is Max's attitude towards racial relations, in the novel? Max is a legal practitioner of repute. He is clearly dis-satisfied with American society. He does not favour the subjugation of minority groups in the Union. This attitude may explain his joining the communist Party and the Labour Defenders.
Whether Max's joining the communist Party is a means of personal escape or an avenue for political achieve-ment, Max takes exception to the racial relations. Max knows all about the black situation. As he points out to Bigger in prison, the whole black race, including other minorities, and its structures are kept together and alive only by faith. Losing that adhesive causes the collaspse of any ideals that the blacks. This is why Max urges Bigger, even at the point when Bigger is headed for the electric chair, to be staunch in his belief in him-self.
For Max, it is unacceptable to regard any human being as second rate or deny him opportunities. Segregation is wrong; condescension is not constructive.
Max's pointed interrogation of Mr. Dalton is very reveal-ing. The millionaire philanthropist toes the line of the system. In his grand offers to and patronage of blacks, Mr. Dalton appears to be eager to be seen as doing good though not doing desirable good. Max does not accept that Mr. Dalton should be allow to perpetrate the wrongs of the system simply because, in what Bigger has done, a "grave harm has been done to two people who've helped Negroes" more than anyone else. He insisted that it critical to go to the root of the matter of the black-white dichotomy. In sending a "dozen pingpong tables to the south side Boys' Club, Mr Dalton is only scratching the surface of the problem. Max asserts that pingpong will not "keep men from murdering".
Max also rejects Mr. Dalton's attitude towards his own philanthropy. When he emplos\ys the likes of Bigger, he send them to school. But he does not employ the edu-cated blacks he creates. Mr Dalton is not shifting from the path beaten by the system. The system does not permit him and he cannot make his Negro tenants pay a fair rent. Seeing the Bigger saga as one throb of the heratbeat of the minority groups, Max insists that "killling this boy isn't going to help us any". Nobody is asking Mr. Dalton to "atone for suffering" that is not his creation. But from Max's point view, what Mr. Dalton is "doing doesn't help". Max considers the conventional treatment of the black man as inconsistent with a good man's conscience and he cannot support those who uphold the system.
Points to note
(a) Max's stance on racial relations
(b) Max's defence of Bigger
(c) Max's indictment of the whites
(d) Max's final submission on Bigger