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Revisiting White and Black Blindness in Richard Wright’s Native Son in The Light of
Levinasian Ethics of Alterity
Nasim Sobherakhshan, Leyli Jamali*
Department of English, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran
*Corresponding Author: Leyli Jamali
Received: 12 March 2015, Accepted: 15 April 2015, Available online: 15 May 2015
Abstract
Ethical criticism seeks to give ethical interpretations of literary texts. Among ethical
philosophers, Emmanuel Levinas as a prominent ethical philosopher puts ethics prior to
philosophy. For him, ethics is, first and foremost, born on the concrete level of person to person
contact. In his thought, this face to face relationship wipes out the subject/object binary
opposition. He believes that by looking at the face of the other, the other becomes our neighbor.
And we are unethical person unless we have responsibility for him or her. This responsibility
toward others makes our subjectivity and leads us to have an ethical life. Richard Wight’s Native
Son circulates around the conflict between Self and Other. This paper focuses on the racial
problems trying to illustrate responsible party for the superiority of whites and for inferiority of
blacks in white dominant societies in Richard Wight’s Native Son. After examining the familial
and social relationships of both white and black characters through Levinas’ ethical concepts of
Face, Other, Subjectivity and Alterity; it is demonstrated that Wright’s naïve characters are not
created in vain. Actually, they are blind to see and perceive each other. Moreover, some of
Wright’s main characters, in spite of their absurd façade, are ethical from within.
Keywords: Ethics, Responsibility, Alterity, Face, Blindness, Other and Subjectivity.
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Introduction
This paper will consider how Richard Wright’s Native Son portrays white and black characters’
blindness toward each other within the framework of Levinasian ethics of alterity. This paper
concentrates on familial and social relationships of black and white and their blindness towards
each other. Seemingly due to such blindness they cannot get along with each other in a white
dominant society, without knowing the root of this blindness. Levinas speaks of a call to
responsibility for the Other. This responsibility in the first place includes caring in a way that it
does not disturb or destroy the Other in his otherness. As Levinas puts, we are ethical people
when we are responsible toward each other in spite of our race, color and ethnicity. This paper
mainly focuses on the reasons that cause the blindness within races by examining the characters
as responsible agents.
Discussion
For centuries racism has been a matter of question in the United States of America, and race
dissimilarities and prejudice has always problematized both black and white people who wanted
to join and live together. In Native Son, Richard Wright illuminates the causes of the blindness of
the blacks and whites and its consequences. To being with, this reading will show the black
blindness specially the protagonist of the novel Bigger Thomas not only to whites but also to the
human beings around him. According to Lopez Miralles in “Invisibility and Blindness in
Ellison’s Invisible Man and Wright’s Native Son”, Bigger is unable to see Jan and Mary in a
different way, he cannot regard them as individuals who actually pretend to be kind. Because to
him: “white people were not really people; they were a sort of great natural force” (Native Son
92). Both whites and blacks cannot be understood by him but it is the power that has always
oppressed and worried him. In fact, because of lack of communication, interracial relation in
Native Son leads only to mistreatment and violence. The best piece of evidence in the novel that
shows Bigger’s shock is the scene that he meets Jan, Mary’s boyfriend and his hands offer to
shake:
Jan smiled broadly, then extended an open palm toward him. Bigger’s
entire body tightened with suspense and dread.…….Bigger’s right hand
raised itself about three inches, then stopped in mid-air. “Come on and
shake,” Jan said. Bigger extended a limp palm, his mouth open in
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astonishment. He felt Jan’s fingers tighten about his own. He tried to pull
his hand away, ever so gently, but Jan held on, firmly, smiling.…..don’t
say sir to me. I’ll call you Bigger and you’ll call me Jan. (62)
Bigger is astonished by the way Jan acts. He isn’t capable of responding to others as
individuals, because he hasn’t had any communication with others specially whites before. White
people are not tangible people to Bigger and his race and they cannot touch whites as real people
being seen a kind of great authority. Bigger Thomas and his people are as racist as anyone else,
for their nervousness and anger blind them to the humanity and individuality of those nearby
them, and chiefly the white people.
In “The Function of Violence in Richard Wright's Native Son”, Butler notes that Native
Son illustrates that racism produces a depressed situation in which people touch each other only
in violence, almost never in love or friendship. Blacks are scared of having communication with
whites and this conditioning restricts the black to respond brutally or to become blind towards
their own being. According to Meryem Ayan in “The Cultural Logic of Racism in Richard
Wright’s Native Son”, in general, upon the race prejudice, whites transmute blacks into the
negative blackness seeing them as destructive whereas blacks see whites as authority and
aggressive forces. Actually, whites and blacks both fail to perceive each other as individuals
because they are restrict by the cultural sense of racism. Both groups with the cultural logic of
racism suppose each other as frightening and unreliable. To see others as individuals, both blacks
and whites should sympathize with each other.
According to John E. Drabinski’s in “Levinas, Race, and Racism”, Levinas’ work
opposes the question of race and racism but it is concerned with the question of individuality that
says who am I in relation to the Other! This is the question of relation that names subjectivity
and demands responsibility. The incident of responsibility is the establishing event of subjective
life. Subjectivity is brought into existence. However, as Julie Lowenstein declares in “Racialized
Blindness in Native Son” Richard Wright provides valuable visions into the roots of racial
isolation and the awful ways in which it affected American society. Thus, it could be argued that
Bigger is not born a fierce criminal but has become one as the result of the violence and racism
that covered the disturbing social situations in which he is raised up. This is what leads to his
metaphorical to blindness toward whites. Actually when the mind is blind, the eyes are useless.
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According to James Nagel’s “Images of Vision in Native Son”, “without the whiteness in
Bigger there would be no killing” (112). This means that even as Bigger kills Mary to put an end
to the whiteness within himself, it is also whiteness that forces him to kill her. Emmanuel
Levinas in his book Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority asserts that:
Access to the face is straightaway ethical. . . . There is first the very
uprightness of the face, its upright exposure, without defense. The skin of
the face is that which stays most naked, most destitute. It is the most
naked, though with a decent nudity. It is the most destitute also: there is an
essential poverty in the face; the proof of this is that one tries to mask this
poverty by putting on poses, by taking on a countenance. The face is
exposed, menaced, as if inviting us to an act of violence. At the same time,
the face is what forbids us to kill. (85)
Levinas’s “Thou shalt not kill” (Ethics and Infinity 89) not only prevents the violence of
murder but also invites to kill the inner violent desires toward the Other. Put within Levinas’s
words, instead of murdering Mary, Bigger should kill the hate of the whiteness within himself.
As portrayed in the novel, the whites have always placed the blacks in a controlled pattern. Even
in the most private area of life, black men have been told what to think and what to do by the
white authority. Throughout the whole novel the white gaze moves the blacks into a dangerous
state of mind. When Bigger goes to Mr. Dalton’s house, he acts according to the white gaze like
a blind man. His knees are a little bent, his lips are fairly open and his shoulders motionless. He
hates himself for being like that and tries not to do it, like a blind man. This is the manner that
white folks desire him to be when in their presence, but as Nipa Nasrin maintains, in “Richard
Wright’s Native Son, the gaze of the white eye, ironically self-blinding, works as panopticon and
makes the black go blind”. Nipa states that, the above mentioned sentences show how the whites
traine the blacks emotionally and made them blind about their human individuality, and how to
ponder themselves as inferior. This blindness in Bigger depicts the black blindness as a whole.
In keeping with Courtney Deal’s “Turning a Blind Eye: The Ethical Implications of
Blindness in Native Son”, Bigger believes both the black and white characters blind to the world
around them. Noticeably, for Bigger the white characters are blind because: “They did not want
to see what others were doing if that doing did not feed their own desires” (Native Son 87). He
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starts to understand who he is as an individual after his performances of violence. After Mary’s
death, he realizes everyone’s blindness and their wish to see him in whatever way works best for
their “own desires” and their world (87). He considers that he is the only one who can see, while
everyone else would fairly be blind. After Bessie’s death, he feels the lack of “wholeness” (87)
in his life because of his black skin. In spite of believing that he can see obviously where others
cannot, Bigger is also blind to the veil, something he understands just before his trial when he
surprises if “he had been blind all along” (Native Son 261). Bigger’s blindness comes from his
powerlessness and opposition to see white people as individuals. He is incapable of seeing Jan
and Mary as individuals who are trying to understand him.
As Nipa Nasrin argues, the racial oppression is the important result of Bigger’s blindness.
The stare of the white eye, being self-blinding, makes the blacks go blind. Blindness is
penetrating in the world of Native Son. Bigger’s proud and pleased blindness also stops him from
seeing what opportunity he has. His pride gives this message that he is entering to a new world
which is an evidence of his blindness. His pride and anger preserve him to control his mind and
prevents him from seeing clearly. He tries to go beyond the white world but he cannot see a
possibility of going out of the white gaze and of going beyond the region of white eye. Bigger’s
blindness finishes when he understands the truth; the fact his own blindness comes out of pride:
“I will be feeling and thinking that they didn’t see me and I didn’t see them…”(Native Son 309).
Bigger understands that being forced into a racial system has made him live in one place while
they lived in another.
Yameen Khan in “Racial Conflict between Black and White Communities in Richard
Wright’s Native Son” states that Bigger Thomas is trapped in a society that is ruled by whites, so
they find the power in white’s hands that cause blacks to be helpless and inferior. Therefore, they
are blind to see the reality of the world and when they encounter the real friendship of the white
characters such as Jan and Mary they cannot perceive it and act in a violent way. The white
capitalist society creates spiritual blindness in blacks that destroyes the possibility of unity.
According to Ming Lim in “The Ethics Of Alterity: Constructed Conjunctions And The Embrace
Of Otherness” for Levinas, there is no other way to create the conjunction between the Self and
the Other except through the endless responsibility for the Other. And this responsibility is
located in language and conversation that allows the Self to identify the Other, to come to him
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across the world of possessed things. Over and done with conversation, Levinas deletes the
violence which is invariably raised in the relationship of the same with the Other because
speaking permits the Other to release himself from the relation with me and me from him. It
could be concluded that the language of a race allows brutality and racial violence to prevent the
shaping of ethical relations. In order to have an ethical relation, human beings must become
equal with each other in the world but in the world of Native Son, by the superiority of whites,
there is no way for equality and it causes blacks to blind toward whites and their race.
During the novel, Wright shows the ways in which white racism forces blacks into a
worried and dangerous state of mind. Blacks repressed by poverty are subverted by their white
oppressors, while newspapers constantly depict blacks as animalistic beasts. Under such
situations, the cultural implications of racism forces Bigger to react violently toward both whites
and blacks because of fear and hate. Bigger is also blind towards his human self because of the
white capitalist thought and media. Bigger unconsciously takes the media’s illustration of
blacklness, and changes it with what is more affirmative in his eyes that have been formed by the
media. Simultaneously, Bigger appreciates the whiteness on screen and dislikes the “great
natural force” (Native Son 92) as reflected in white society and hates it from within.
As Lopez Miralles argues, the media has a dominant influence on blindness and
invisibility. Films like Trader Horn not only spoil the minds of the white race but also the minds
of a black race. The media spreads a sense of white superiority that rise whites’ prejudgments
against blacks and vice versa. Besides, the newspapers also represent these conditions. In the
novel they portray Bigger as a violent man and convict him before his trial just because of the
color of his skin: “He is about five feet, nine inches tall and his skin is exceedingly black…..It is
easy to imagine how this man, in the grip of a brain-numbing sex passion, overpowered little
Mary Dalton, raped her, murdered her, beheaded her…..”(Native Son 204). It could be argued
that Bigger’s fear prevents him from having relationship with others specially whites and it is
worth mentioning that whites and their superiority cause this fear in blacks that blinds them to
their existence and the real meaning of life.
Apart from the Black race and their blindness towards the Whit community and themselves
white blindness is also a prevalent issue in Native Son. The white characters in the novel, mostly
those with a self-intentionally progressive attitude toward racial relations, are influenced by
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racism in various ways. Blindness is not only a matter of whites and invisibility a matter of
blacks, blacks and whites can be equally blind and invisible. While whites are blind because they
consider blacks as a mass rather than as individuals, blacks are blind for submitting to their
inferiority and for not considering any white exception as an individual being.
According to Lopez Miralles, the relationship of Jan and Mary with Bigger is very
important in discovering blindness and invisibility in the narrative. While Jan and Mary cannot
understand Bigger’s feelings as a human, he sees them as a cruel and repressive white force
instead of people with good purposes. Therefore, both parties are blind and invisible to each
other. One example of Jan and Mary’s blindness is their unfair language. This superior language
maks Bigger aware of his inferiority:
You know, Bigger, I’ve long wanted to go into these houses, she said,
pointing to the tall, dark apartment buildings looming to either side of
them, and just see how your people live. You know what I mean? I’ve
been to England, France and Mexico, but I don’t know how people live
ten blocks from me. We know so little about each other. I just want to see.
I want to know these people. (Native Son 64)
Jan displays the same when he asks: “You live with your people?” (67) or “I see what
they’ve done to those people” (68). These sentences portray their blindness, and the failure to see
Bigger’s individuality and human feelings. The way Jan and Mary treat Bigger stresses their
blindness even more. They are very kind to him and even inspire him to have dinner in the black
area. Although they have good purposes, they do not actually realize that they are insensible to
Bigger’s emotions, blind to understand that he is uncomfortable. It could be argued that Mary
and Jan are influenced by the White ideology and connot see that Bigger’s black world is a black
hell, shaped by the whites. They cannot feel that they actually making Bigger feel useless. They
are misled by their own belief and blind about Bigger’s personality.
Same as Mary and Jan, Mrs. Dalton is another character with wholly good intentions, yet
she becomes the victim of her own hegemonic language. Lopez Miralles argues that the literal
blindness of Mrs. Dalton signifies the symbolic blindness of all characters, but especially of
herself and her husband. One of the evidences why the Daltons are blind is that they are unable
to see Bigger beyond his image of inferiority. When Mrs. Dalton enters Mary’s bedroom,
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although she cannot see Bigger, she never supposes that Bigger is there and much less that he is
murdering her daughter. Her literal incapability to see him looks like her inability to concern him
as dangerous as any white. The literal blindness of Mrs. Dalton is enlarged to characters like Jan
and Mary, who do not understand Bigger’s emotional state. Daltons charge blacks with high
rents and explain their actions stating that: “to charge them less rent would be unethical” (Native
Son 236). To ponder it unethical is to be blind by the biases of a racist culture. Besides, they do
not accept that their intentions to help blacks are ways to hide their own abuses.
Levinas claims that we are in an irregular relationship with our neighbor that prearranges
us with ethical responsibility even before awareness or choice. In the face to face meeting an
infinity and alterity about our neighbor is shown, which is involved to my ontological grasp and
forces me to respond to him. It could be argued that Mr. Dalton is both intentionally and
unintentionally blind toward black like all other whites. Daltons consider they are friends of
blacks and identify with the black world. But they are unaware and blind to the reality of the
black condition as their neighbor. They cannot understand to what extent their gaze works on the
black and robs them of their human being. Mr. Dalton does not rent to the black in the white
region and does not reduce the blacks’ rent though he sees their poor condition. He considers it
unethical. Mrs. Dalton’s incapability of seeing Bigger leads him to kill Mary, just as the total
denial of the whites to see blacks as humans causes blacks to live in fear and hatred. Her
blindness signifies the powerlessness of the white America as a whole to see blacks as anything
other than individuals. So both Mr. Dalton and Mrs. Dalton are unethical people for they fail to
understand the real problems and because they are blind to black people’s conditions.
Also the media plays a very negative role in making the gap of misunderstanding among
black and white people in Native Son. The misrepresentation of whites in media rushes the
feeling of racism in Bigger’s mind and forces him to committing crime. It is the perfect picture
of whiteness in the cinemas that best explains Bigger’s hatred and fear of the whites. Media often
limits people from seeing the real others round them. So it causes whites to be blind to their
people around. Salem Amar in “Prejudice, Violence and Death in Alex La Guma’s A Walk in the
Night and Richard Wright’s Native Son” argues that discrimination on lands of race was meant
by the white capitalists to preserve their material benefits; therefore, they always elevated ideas
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and philosophies which considered the whites as being at the top of the ranked order of peoples,
which would allow them to legitimate the mistreatment of other races.
Their strong philosophies are reflected in Native Son that its assumptions are manifested
mostly by lawyer Max who is in care of the defense of Bigger. Max’s speech to the court
attributes violence in American society to the unjust and unfair system which causes the destitute
to feel anxious and frustrated: “Let us know upon what ground we are putting our feet, what the
consequences are for us and those whom we judge” (Native Son 277). The system makes them
pursue purposeless and useless lives, which might lead them into a real threat to the whole
society:
Your Honor, I would have you believe that I am not insensible to the deep
burden of responsibility I am throwing upon your shoulders…..I have lain
without sleep, trying to think of a way to picture to you and to the world
the causes and reasons why this Negro boy sits here a self-confessed
murderer….Dare I, deeply mindful of this boy’s background and race, put
his fate in the hands of a jury…..So today I come to face this Court,
rejecting a trial by jury, willingly entering a plea of guilty, asking in the
light of the laws of this state that this boy’s life be spared for reasons
which I believe affect the foundations of our civilization. (277)
It could be concluded that, Max, Bigger’s white skinned lawyer desires to solve the chief
problem in the white dominant society. In defense of Bigger he says to the court that death would
not be the final of these crimes and they should find the cause of fear and hate in people of colors
that causes the big problems such as killing: “Death! And that would be the end of this case. But
that would not be the end of this crime! ......... Fear and hate and guilt are the keynotes of this
drama!” (277). He wants to find the answer to stop other Negros perpetrate such crimes. He
considers that white community is responsible for black inferiority because they are blind to see
the others specially blacks as human individuals. They do not want to see them because of their
own profits. According to Helen Douglas in “Difficult Liberation: Reading Levinas in Africa”,
the world is always being stopped by the defenseless face of the Other that calls us to our
responsibility. The best evidence of this responsibility is shown in Bigger’s nonstop talking with
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Max and sharing of his feelings with the white skinned lawyer. Soon he came to see Max as
someone who might truly understand him.
Max does not have a previous conception of who Bigger was and he does not understand
Bigger’s experiences or aims. He permits himself to go into Bigger’s world with complete
openness, free from ruling. So Max is an ethical person who does not pay attention to colors of
skins and listens carefully to Bigger. To him all of the people are the same. He wants to show the
court that whites are responsible for their problems because they are blind to the people nearby
them. They portray blacks in images of animals in the newspapers and by producing the movies
that shows blacks as savages but whites as superior which lead blacks to act in violence way
because they rob their humanity and draw a color line between the worlds of black and white.
When we look at another person and see their eyes, nose, a forehead, a chin, and all of
which can be defined, this causes us to find the Other only as an object. And this precisely shows
lack of respect untimately leading to violence. In his evocative language, Levinas recommens
that the best manner in which to meet the Other contains not in the least in taking note of the
color of his eyes. When a person sees the color of the eyes, the Other becomes amazing or in
another words something that can be seen by which his complicated and infinite otherness is
disturbed. In contrast with the unashamed intrusion that breaks in on the Other without shame,
the Levinasian ethical relation designate and supposed in the demand of “Thou shall not kill”
(89).
Conclusion
Richard Wright’s Native Son is a narrative about White and Black blindness. From all e
characters in the novel, Max, the lawyer is the only person who paves the way for Levinasian
ethics of alterity by his actions and theough his beliefs. However, the people around him and the
society resisted such beliefs on equality. Levinas in Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with
Phillipe Nemo speaks of a call to responsibility for the Other. This responsibility in the first place
involves in taking care not to violate the Other in his otherness, which is to say not to decrease
the Other on his face, but instead to identify, respect, and do justice and honesty to him in his
otherness. In the Native Son Daltons are blind to perceive blacks real conditions. So they are not
ethical because they cannot stop their profits that earn by their superior civilization.
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As Levinas states responsibility is elaborated as an ethic that stretches beyond
individualized norms of duty. Ethical responsibility can encourage us to political decisions not
for self-interest, but in the concerns of justice for Others. Jan and Mary in Native Son are ethical
people but with wrong choices: in their friendship with Bigger they use the words which show
their obvious superiority, yet neither of the two characters recognized this superiority in their
voice. In the last scene in the jail, what Jan understood was that he could not adopt to know the
pain and suffering Bigger nor could he request from Bigger to be accepted as a friend. After
listening to Jan, Bigger too comes to a better understanding of Jan. Although the problems of
race and racism will never end but it could be argued that to live in the same world under the
same sky and having a peaceful life, both the Blacks and White should learn to see each other as
human beings and they should respect to each other without paying attention to the difference of
their skin color. Based on Richard Wright’s Native Son and Levinas’s attitudes, both races
should be responsible toward each other because the incident of responsibility is the establishing
event of the subjective life. Through this subjectivity they can easily find an ethical way out
instead of violence.
References:
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and
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