Do stereotypes about groups still exist today? And which stereotypes does Richard Wright have about people and things in society?1)Create a display...

Three big questions to answers. Stereotypes are still all
around us; they help us to make sense of realities which we don't know directly or that
we find threatening. Stereotypes make these groups irremediably other from what we are.
The poor are lazy, Muslims are dangerous terrorists, black are over sexual, all the
politicians are the same . . . these are just some
examples.

Richard Wright challenged stereotypes about
African Americans in his books. Yet, several critics have faulted him for relying on
stereotypes himself. For example, fellow African American novelist James Baldwin faulted
Wright for depicting characters which lacked psychological depth and credibility. More
recent critics such as Henry Louis Gates defined the narrative voice in Black
Boy - American Hunger and the character of Richard as a stereotype in the
tradition of the Sidney Poitier's characters: they are exceptional individuals who stand
out from the bleak mass of African American, the exception not the rule. These critics
find Wright guilty of relying on the stereotype that defined African Americans are
backward. In addition, feminist critics have pointed to the stereotypical notions of
women in Wright's writings. They point out how female characters are either sexually
aggressive or asexual; there is no credible in between.

As
for the characters who are victims of stereotyping, Wright's books provide a lot of
examples. In Native Son, for example, Bigger is victim of the idea
that blacks are all rapiers and that they secretly covet white
women.