st and not cared forby a world with all of those conditions. They lose their individuality andthen their selfesteem. Those whites took the hate and despair that theyreceived, and punished blacks, a weaker race, with harsh discipline. WhenReynolds and Pease ganged up on Richard, Richard did, "feel no hate forthe men who had driven [him] from the job. They were not individual men,but part of a huge implacable, elemental design." (229) By teaming up onblacks like Pease and Reynolds did to Richard, whites are able to uniteand find power in numbers, and in turn satisfy their human need for pride.Richard was commanded to distinguish the separation ^A^A^Hand doeslead to the separation of the races, and coupled with the ego that thewhite man at the optical company demonstrated about one's race results inracism. The cycle of racism ends in the action of transferring that painagainst those who had identities. This was true for Richard's UncleHoskins as he, "had been killed by whites who had long coveted hisflourishing liquor business."(63) The whites began to hate the blacks,thus delivering the same hate to the blacks that they themselves felt theyreceived from society. This end hate regenerates the system by leaving theblacks with no identities, and so they started, "transferring their hatredof themselves to others with a black skin and fighting." (298)Identity plays a part in racism, but the deterioration of identityhas its roots in external strain including that of society. Richard sawthe breakdown of character by pressures in Don, a worker at the opticalcompany whose, "position was not much better thanoffhand, bantering way."(289) Therefore the whites' identity crisis as a result of the perceivedgreat expectations and the individual's weakness combine to further wareaway the individual to racism. ^B^H^G^H^GBoy. At early childhood,Richard remained blocked from the molding of society, and so did notelicit a distinction between blacks and white...
