A Raisin in the Sun is a play set in the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s. It focuses on the lives and tribulations of the Younger family. Three of the four working-age Youngers hold full-time service jobs. Lena Younger works as a maid/nanny for a white family. Ruth works from home doing laundry for other families, and Walter Lee is a chauffer for a wealthy white man. The Youngers work constantly and very hard and are still living in poverty. Racism is blatant in this play. Cars owned by black people will get tickets for parking in places that white people’s cars will not. Carl Lindner, who is merely racism personified, visits the Youngers and bribes them to stay out of an all-white neighborhood. When the Younger family declines the offer and at the climax of the play and move into their new house, the white neighbors are angry and disgusted that a color family is moving in near them.
The Younger family lives in a common 1950s tenement, which included entire families living in one to two-bedroom apartments with a shared bathroom on each floor. These apartments were small and run-down, and were made especially crowded by the large …show more content…
Colored people were not welcome in white neighborhoods, and got tickets for things white people did not. Now, however, the racism in Chicago, mostly in the form of fatal police shootings. Chicago has one of the highest police brutality rates of anywhere in the county. So, while racism is present in both eras, today’s is understated, which, I believe, is worse. Other aspects of the modern South Side, however, are improving. The rate of violent crime is down and continuing to drop. So, while racism is present in both time periods, the fact that is was more obvious in the 1950s made it easier to combat. Living conditions may have improved, but poverty is still unusually high. Because of this, I believe that racial equality has, in fact, not improved since the