A Raisin in the Sun - Essay Example

This causes disagreements between the family members as everyone has different ideas on how the money should be used. They rent a house particularly in a white neighborhood, but they are not very welcome. This is evident by the way Karl Lindner the white neighborhood’s representative asks to buy them out with a very generous offer. At the end of the play, the family leaves with their pride of being black and refuse the money offered by the white people. This paper therefore seeks to analyze the play A raisin in the sun and show how racism was deeply rooted back in the 1950’s and the manner in which blacks always wanted to pursue the American dream where they would hope to have “life, liberty as well as the pursuit of happiness”.

Looking at the social climate of the 1950s and 1960’s as displayed by the play, it is easy to see that black people lived in poor conditions as compared to white people. In this era, most of the public buildings in the white neighborhood were full of racial segregation. White people did not mingle or live together with black people as they were thought to be of an inferior class. Many whites were also of the belief that by having black people in a white neighborhood, the value of their property would go down1. . given in the year 1952 by the Women’s committee to end discrimination in the medical services, it was seen that there was a high connection between high death rates in black people and hospital segregation2.

Still in the schools black children attended sub-standard schools as compared the white children. In most of the public schools together with colleges, racial segregation was rampant and blacks attained marginal education as compared to white children. Despite the fact that the Supreme Court in the year 1954 made a ruling using the Brown v. Board Education, that school segregation was not constitutional, it took quite a number of years for it to be implemented. In terms of the economic climate that the blacks faced during the 1950s, there was a lot of racial discrimination, which led to blacks getting very low paying jobs.

After the Second World War, black veterans went back home so as to share their victory and live the American Dream. This however was not to be a reality for them as they were prohibited from settling in the upcoming suburbs. This is similar to the raisin in the sun play where Mama and her family are being asked to leave particularly because it is a white neighborhood. In the 1950’s black Americans have no choice but to live in cramped areas whereby even finding good jobs is equally hard. Unfortunately, candidates who are educated and are highly qualified for good jobs are not also lucky and they also face racial discrimination when the hiring process is on; for this reason, they have to settle for odd jobs.

Black American population between 1940 and 1970 had drastically increased from 50 percent all the way to 80 percent. In the south, many black Americans lost both mining and share cropping jobs particularly due to the government investing