中国人民大学

课程论文

论文题目：Internalized Racism in Contemporary

African American Drama——On August

Wilson’s Fences

课程名称： 英美戏剧选读

任课老师： 谢江南老师

学生姓名： 王涤菲

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Wang Difei
English Language and Literature
Renmin University
28 November, 2021
Internalized Racism in Contemporary African American Drama——On August

Wilson’s Fences

Abstract

The United States is a nation that has been trapped in thorny racial issues for

almost 200 years. Although the 1776 Declaration of Independence states all men are

created equal in America and the 1960s civil rights movement ends direct institutional

discrimination in the country, African Americans have been inflicted and suffered

from racism’s long-term effects, which leads to their gradual internalization of racial

discrimination. Actually, contemporary African American writers have displayed

certain behavioral features of internalized racism in their works, such as black

people’s desire to be like the whites, their inner segregation, as well as intra-racial

violence.

This essay focuses on August Wilson’s Fences, which unveils African Americans’

inner segregation due to internalized racism. The play exposes internalized racism’s

injurious impact on African Americans’ psyche.

Keywords: Fences, internalized racism

1.Introduction of Fences

Fences is the sixth major play of August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle. Set in 1957,

the play unfolds at a time when the Civil Rights Movement had not yet begun to blow

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full and opportunities for people of color were still limited in America. Black

Americans in 1950s, who migrated eagerly from southern homestead to certain

flourishing northern cities, wanted to improve themselves through hard work and

thrift. Society and its laws frustrated them however. They were rejected by the city,

settling only in shabby houses made of sticks and tar-paper and selling the use of their

muscles for survival. Wilson displays such suffering and struggling in Fences,

portraying the lingering effects of racism and segregation on the Maxson household.

By exploiting fences as the central metaphor in the play, Wilson further examines

racism’s injurious impact on African Americans’ psyche. The protagonist, Troy

Maxson, builds internal fences in order to exclude and exert control over all those

whom he encounters, including himself.

2. “Fences to keep people in”: Troy’s segregation with himself

A fence in Fences is much more than a structural isolator around Troy’s two-story

brick home; it is meanwhile a psychological manifestation of his struggle for survival,

as Troy’s friend Jim Bono claims, “Some people build fences to keep people out…and

other people build fencesto keep people in” (67). Wilson’s black portraits regularly

undergo dual contradiction and oppression from real society and characters’ inner

world. In Fences, to be specific, it involves a conflict among the characters’ desire to

break through boundaries, redefine themselves, and discover self-fulfillment versus

the fences and boundaries erected by society and individuals that limit, hinder, define,

or exclude. Wilson repeatedly mentions the scene of repairing fences in the family

yard, which also implies the psychological courses of Troy’s gradual segregation with

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his true self.

Fences focuses on Troy Maxson’s internalization of racial segregation as he

indulges himself in resentment and depression for a past full of indignities. The story

occurs at a time when organized baseball has finally become integrated, but racial

discrimination remains widespread across the country. Throughout the play, Wilson

situates Troy within the historical context of the Negro Leagues, where his character

experiences the feelings of actual black ballplayers who were denied chances to

compete at the major-league level. Indeed, Troy Maxon, the former Negro League

hitter, has spent most of his lives enduring bitterness and hatred, convincing that as a

black man in America, “you born with two strikes on you before you come to the

plate” (76).

Wilson artfully uses baseball, a game that has long been regarded as a symbol for

the American dream, to express hope and the drive for individual success of African

Americans. In Fences, the closest that Troy participates in the American dream is

during his career in the Negro Leagues. Wilson associates Troy’s past glory with his

younger days as a ballplayer: filled with self-affirmation, infinite possibilities, and the

chance for heroic success. The very scene of hitting a home run, especially if the ball

is hit over the fence, demonstrates extraordinary power and the ability to transcend

limits. Lyons, Troy’s son from a previous marriage, recalls his father’s strength of

hitting a home run over the stand: “Right out there in Homestead Field. He wasn’t

satisfied hitting in the seats…he want to hit it over everything! After the game he had

two hundred people standing around waiting to shake his hand” (101). Troy himself

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also boasts “I hit seven home runs off of Satchel Paige. You can’t get no better than

that!” (38).

Discrimination cuts down this former Negro League hero’s baseball career,

however, making his American dream a prolonged nightmare. At age 53, Troy now is

too old to play professional baseball. He is banned forever to enter the door opened by

Jackie Robinson, who initiated the integration of major league baseball by playing for

the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Troy therefore represents the loss of professional and

personal opportunities for African Americans of the time. His potential has been lost

and his athletic prowess now only exists in the oral record of his family members. In

fact, it’s true that Troy can solely advance in his current job as a garbage collector,

moving during the course of the play from hauler to driver. At a time of progressive

social and racial development, Troy can merely move from the back of the garbage

trunk to the front of the trunk, taking government subsidy from his brother Gabriel’s

war injury to supplement his expenses. “I do the best I can do”, he gives vent to his

wife, “I come in here every Friday. I carry a sack of potatoes and a bucket of lard. You

all line up at the door with your hands out. I give you the lint from my pockets. I give

you my sweat and my blood. I ain’t got no tears. I done spent them” (44).

Fences has been a unique work of Wilson partly in that the playwright adopts a

traditionally white cultural form — baseball — so as to express his protagonist’s self-

segregation and complicated experience as black American in a white-dominated

society. Poverty and the effects of racial discrimination have indeed poisoned Troy’s

psyche for the last 17 years since his disillusionment of the baseball dream. He lives

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all the time in his own failing world, where he angers and battles, imagining that if it

were not for the lack of opportunity and age, he would have been the best baseball

player to play the game. Deprived of warmth and wholeness, Troy builds inner fences,

with which he isolates and ignores things happened around him, especially when it

comes to sports. He indignantly responds to Rose’s mention of Jackie Robinson

crossing the color line, “I done seen a hundred niggers play baseball better than Jackie

Robinson…Jackie Robinson wasn’t nobody” (12).

Bitter about his own exclusion from the baseball league, Troy is resistant when

Cory proposes to attend college on a football scholarship. He warns his son “the white

man ain’t gonna let you get nowhere with that football noway” (40). But Cory, who

holds the same American dream as Troy does, insists that Troy is selfishly preventing

him from success. In act two, father and son confront each other. Cory angrily

expresses his resentment over his father’s domination and the loss of his final chance:

“You ain’t never gave me nothing but hold me back. Afraid I was gonna be better than

you” (94). Troy’s efforts to stop his son from playing football can be viewed as an

external form of his internalized racism. Dwelling on a stigmatized past, though

reluctant and enraged, Troy has internalized racial segregation, reminding himself that

in a white-dominated world black man will never have chances to win. He is so

overwhelmed by his own resentment and inner segregation that he destroys his son’s

dream of a baseball career— a dream that may be realized with the change of times.

Troy, instead, persuades Cory as well as Lyons to learn a trade like carpentry or auto

mechanics: “That way you have something can’t nobody take away from you” (40).

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 African American men suffer from a history of race-based micro-aggressions,

which serve as subtle reminders of their unworthiness and convey a “stay in your

place” message. The cumulative effects of these micro-aggressions and other more

overt racial contempt cause African American men to internalize feelings and

thoughts that reduce your ability to accomplish goals, to form positive relationships

with important people in your life. After his rejection from the baseball field, Troy

done learned his mistake and “learned to do what’s right by it” (20). “You’ve got to

take the crooked with the straights” (41), he teaches his son. From the very beginning,

Troy attributes his unsuccessful life to the impact of racial discrimination. In order to

preserve and protect his last pride, he locks himself in a relatively safe region, that is,

his own vigilant inner world, where he finds the strength to fight with Death and

always keeps up his vigilance.

Wilson specifically links the image of Death with white racism in Fences. Troy’s

life, as he sees it himself, is like a baseball game loaded with fastballs, curveballs and

numerous strikes against him. The unrelenting Death represents the injustice of the

white man. Hence when recalling his stay in Mercy Hospital to Bono and Rose, Troy

personifies Death with white characteristics: “Death stood up, throwed off his robe…

had him a white robe with a hood on it” (14). To avoid being trapped for a second

time in a white society, or being in Death’s grip, Troy maintains a watchful eye.

“Death ain’t nothing”, he emphasizes, “I done seen him. Done wrassled with him. You

can’t tell me nothing about death. Death ain’t nothing but a fastball on the outside

corner” (12). In act two, Troy rages against Death, claiming to build fences so as to

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combat Death’s hold over him:

“Alright…Mr. Death. See now…I’m gonna tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m

gonna take and build me a fence around this yard. See? I’m gonna build me a fence

around what belongs to me. And then I want you to stay on the other side. See? You

stay over there until you’re ready for me” (83).

Troy’s final resolution to build fences around the yard, on the other hand, reflects

his determination to be a guard, to stay in his own fences and never step out. In the

final scene of the play, the vigilant Troy swings his bat and just falls over. For the last

time, he wages battle with imaginary Death only to experience defeat. Wilson

deliberately connects baseball, Cory and Death with Troy’s psychological segregation

with himself. Whether the cause of Troy’s death is a heart attack or simply illness and

age, what Wilson underscores in Fences may be that his physical pain is all along

secondary to his psychological suffering of internalized segregation.

Bibliography

[1]Wilson, August. Fences: a play. Vol. 6. Penguin, 2016.

[2]SparkNotes. Fences. https://www.sparknotes.com/drama/fences. Accessed 22 Sep.

2021.

[2]Wikipedia contributors. "Fences (play)." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fences_(play)&oldid=1032812785.

Accessed 22 Sep. 2021.

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