Naturalism, which is not the celebration of nature it sounds like, served the post-Depression writers well as a style of writing. Stark documentation of facts, the use of legal language to sum up social attitudes, and the absence of emotional values distinguished the writing of that time. For a black writer, it involved a vision of race war in America, in which all blacks are right and all whites are wrong. The simplicity of this judgment took a completely documentary form and was therefore all the more shocking.
Wright's successors Ellison and Baldwin would have a more complex and emotional approach to the race war. Unlike Wright, they would not view the black man's life as one of absolute despair, but would uncover joy and love as well. Only the most masochistic white reader would not be upset by Wright. It is not so evident in Black Boy, but in his later work, his declaration of race war is outspoken. Since he dealt with characters as historical, nearly legendary, forces, their actions are entirely ruled either by historical rage or historical guilt. In that sense they are not realistic. They act out a moral drama based on historical memory. The white people no matter how innocent in fact they might be are objects of justifiable revenge. The black people no matter how immoral their individual acts might be are historically justified; they are always right.
In Black Boy, the whites who enter the story are invariably mouthpieces for southern racism. They are, in a sense, as much victimized by the institution of racism as are the blacks. They do not emerge as individuals, but as contemptible types, entirely ruled by prevalent attitudes. Public opinion rules them as much as it does blacks. Richard's difficulty in assuming the role of the passive victim makes him dangerous to both communities. To identify oneself with a particular race and thereby judge one's actions according to the history of that race was never an outstanding feature of Western individualism; yet it was a well-concealed fact that whites did think of themselves in racial terms, especially when threatened by foreigners.
Wright might be criticized for being simplistic in his judgments, but the reader must confront at all times the conditions that produced such a writer a writer so thoroughly American and in the light of those conditions accept and reckon with his presence. Black Boy explains what those conditions were and, in doing so, introduces Richard Wright to America as a human fact.
