American life Essay

Lorraine Hansberrys 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun reflects the cultural context in which it was created, reflecting crucial changes in American life. In particular, it reflects the American mainstreams new tolerance for civic rights and African Americans rising aspirations, but it also inspired a great admit of criticism from black leftist intellectuals for paying too little attention to black issues and focusing too much on integration. The play tells the story of the jr. family, who still live in their dilapidated Chicago apart manpowert long after they migrated north and fantasy of improving their lives.Mama, the old-school matriarch, fulfills her late husbands dream of buying a home, using his insurance money for a house in all-white Clyborne Park. (Her aspirations and actions seem modest, but they are rather bold for the time and regard the older generations wisdom. ) Her grget son Walter dreams of making a fortune but loses the familys savings, though he redeems himself by d eciding the family should strickle despite white neighbors disapproval.Ruth, his wife, is bitter but believes in Walters dreams and stands by him despite his faults. Beneatha, Walters flighty younger sister, is the most comical character a college student aiming to become a doctor, she seeks her identity through two diametric suitors rich, effete George Murchison (Hansberrys symbol for affluent blacks pretensions) and Nigerian Joseph Asagai (who inspires Beneatha to reconnect with her heritage). It draws partly from Hansberrys own experience regarding integration.Born into an affluent black family in 1930, Hansberry moved at age eight with her parents to Chicagos Woodlawn neighborhood, then a white, middle-class enclave he parents had to wage a long legal battle to move there, resulting in a Supreme Court decision that allowed racial covenants in housing. Like her family, the Youngers in A Raisin in the Sun face white neighbors who claim good intentions but try to discourage blac ks from moving into the neighborhood.The family sees through Karl Lindners false friendliness, and Beneatha comments, He said everybody ought learn to sit down and hate each other with good Christian fellowship (Hansberry 107). The play appeared during a crucial phase of the civil rights suit, only five years after the Brown decision outlawed segregated facilities and only two years after the tense integration of petty Rocks Central High School.Though the movements best-known advertises focused on the South, author Mark Newman illustrates that the NAACP waged a long, successful campaign focused mainly on ending unwritten separatism and promoting integration in the North, especially Chicago (Newman 44). Indeed, Chicago was the site of extensive race riots in public housing in 1953 (Hanley et al 316), and in the 1960s Martin Luther King tried but failed to get Chicagos neighborhoods to end their de facto segregation and fall by the wayside driving out prospective black residents.H ansberry demonstrates that integration in the North was still a challenge, especially when the antagonists were not violent but superficially genial, bid the Lindner character, who proposes a buyout and tells the Youngers, I want you to believe me when I tell you that race prejudice simply doesnt enter into it (Hansberry 104), when it certainly does. When their meeting ends, Lindners terminology I hope you know what youre getting into (Hansberry 138) betray his true feelings and perhaps those of Northern whites in general, who often favored integration but had arch(a) attitudes and did not want black neighbors.In this, Hansberry launches a subtle but nonetheless clear attack on white hypocrisy. She also comments on the different facets of black society, which have different aims at this crucial time in their history. Mama has the most modest aspirations but also the most common grit her simple, realistic desire for a home is both conservative and radical, since it involves int egration, then the civil rights movements chief aim, though Mama is by no means militant.Walter, though fiery and impractical, sees her point of view after his own dream fails and stimulates a stand, refusing to defer Mamas dream and telling Lindner they impart move to Clyborne Park regardless because my father my father he earned it (Hansberry 138). The dream is Mamas, but she and Walter together refuse to defer it any endless and act boldly. Meanwhile, Beneatha the most comic character for her flightiness represents younger, ambitious blacks efforts to find themselves. Studying to be a doctor, she rejects her mothers traditional beliefs and dates two men who represent black youths aims.On one hand, George Murchison represents the black bourgeoisie, of whom Beneatha says, The only tidy sum in the world who are more snobbish than rich white people are rich colored people (Hansberry 34). Instead, she seeks her identity through Joseph Asagai, a Nigerian fellow student whose co mment, Assimilationism is so popular in your country (Hansberry 48), makes her port away from integration as an answer. Walter, always humoring his sister, tells her, You know, when the New Negroes have their convention . . .you are going to be the chairman of the Committee on Unending excitation (Hansberry 98). Though white audience hailed the play, black intellectuals did not receive it with equal regard. Writing in 1963, social critic Harold Cruse (a leftist who opposed integration in favor of Malcolm X-style separatism) excoriated Hansberry for catering to white liberals sensibilities, claiming she wanted to assuage the commercial theaters liberal guilt and calling A Raisin in the Sun a good old-fashioned, home-spun saga of some good working-class folk in pursuit of the American dream .. . in whites fashion (Cruse 278). In addition, he claimed Hansberry had an essentially quasi-white preference through which she visualizes the Negro world (Cruse 283) and believed her not mili tant enough. Indeed, scholar Richard King claims that the play was part of a greater social context in which cultural, racial, and ghostly differences were downplayed or denied in postwar America (King 4).He claims that Hansberry downplayed her own characters blackness to the same degree that The Diary of Anne Frank downplayed its characters Jewish identity, and that Hansberry and others like her were advocating the integrationist vision and go prey . . . to misapplied internationalism (King 273). However, Hansberry explores the black communitys different attitudes, rendering these criticisms ill applied. Though she was by no means militant and hailed from an affluent background, she experienced integration first-hand and knew it was not an easy sell-out (as the militant Cruse claimed).Instead, according to black scholar Jacqueline Bobo, Hansberry aimed to fight American popular cultures still-prevalent negative black stereotypes and claimed in 1961, I did not feel it was my right or duty to help present the American public with yet another latter-day minstrel submit (Bobo et al 184) instead, she wanted to present characters with dignity, intelligence, and genuine aspirations, which in 1959 was still a bold effort. The play is not militant, but neither does it whitewash its characters.A Raisin in the Sun is more than simply a play about a black family moving out of the ghetto it reflects the social and cultural context of its time. It embraces the civil rights movements integrationist aims and reminds the audience that the Youngers move will not be easy, and it comments on black societys conflicting outlooks while avoiding stereotypes. While it did not take a militant extreme by countering white racism with a racism of its own, it reflects a greater American context in which ending segregation was still a struggle, but one which the American mainstream supported and aspired to achieve (to varying degrees).REFERENCESBobo, Jacqueline, Cynthia Hudley, and Clau dine Michel, eds. The Black Studies Reader. New York Routledge, 2004. Cruse, Harold. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. New York William Morrow, 1967. Hanley, Sharon, Stephen Middleton, and Charlotte M. Stokes, eds. , The African American Experience. Englewood Cliffs NJ Globe, 1992. Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. New York Random House, 1959. King, Richard H. Race, Culture, and the Intellectuals, 1940-1970. Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Newman, Mark. The Civil Rights Movement. Westport CT Praeger, 2004.