The Tides of Racism
It is widely known that conditions in the Jim Crow-era South were viciously oppressive and harmful to Black people, as well as anyone else without white skin. Even today, many ideologies of this time, like the idea that giving other people rights "costs you yours," continue to actively hurt the same communities as they did nearly 100 years ago. And throughout history, natural disasters have only further shown the effects of systems of discrimination through the disproportionate harm they cause to marginalized communities. In "Down by the Riverside," Richard Wright places a fictional yet realistic Black farmer, Mann, in the real and deadly Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 , mainly to protest the immense inequality in the South under Jim Crow. But also, at several points, he uses Mann's thoughts to present his idea of a world free of the racism that caused the story's violence and injustice in the first place. One such passage where these goals are app...