A Short Story

For this blog post I am going to talk about a short story called the almost white boy by Willard Motley. This was within a compilation of short stories which are in the book the best short stories by black writers. Out of all the stories in the book I found this one to be the most interesting to me. It described a boy who had a black mother and a white father but was almost indistinguishable as black. A major conflict in the story was that he couldn't seem to fit into either the category of white or black. This is a common issue in society today because in our society we feel the need to put everything into a category. Whether it’s by race, gender, skin complexion or maybe even by ability.

The main character seemed to try to fit in more with his “white side” because he was not excepted by the black community because he did not have all the attributes that are most commonly associated with black people. The author was able to show this through describing interactions in which he had had with both black and white girls and his “friends”. Also the story gave a lot of negative connotations with describing the main character to show how society rejected him, such as saying “ his skin was white as slim peterson’s; his blond hair didn’t have a curl at all. His nose was big and his lips were big--the only tip-off.”.

The way that the author showed how the main character tried to brush of the side of him that was black really interested me because its something that I see happen today with people who are not even of mixed races. In the story he sits at a dinner table and listen to racist joke all evening without saying a word in the defense of black people for fear that the parent of his “girlfriend” would find out that he was black and be repulsed by him and even try to kill him. And even though the times have changed this still happens today, where people of color will change  the way that they speak and act in order to try to not be perceived as “ghetto” or unintelligent, even though the way a person talks is not an accurate indicator of their intellectual capabilities.

This story just reassures the fact that people are heavily influenced by what others think about them. In the story his parents try to instill in him that “people are just people” but still he tries to change himself to try to fit into one of societies categories.This is because as human beings we all just was to fit in and be accepted.