The fight in Black Boy In the penultimate chapter of Black Boy, Richard participates in a very unusual way in a boxing match with Harrison, a fellow employee of the "boy black". Although this seems unlikely at the beginning of the chapter, Richard eventually gives in to Harrison's demands to fight. The culture that instigates this fighting is pretty obvious: White employers want to see Black guys fight like a “dog or a rooster” for their entertainment. The ideology behind the event, then, would be the assumption of white men, like most of the Southern culture in this book, that blacks are inferior to whites. This idea is not consciously implemented in the minds of employers, but it is an aspect of the culture that they take for granted. In Richard and Harrison's minds, however, such a confrontation would be degrading. However, Harrison needs the money the whites offer him for the fight. For Harrison it is not so much an ideology that influences his choice, but a need, that money is necessary to survive. For Richard, though, a deeper influence could push him to fight. Throughout chapter 12, Richard resists the idea of ​​a fight. Even at the beginning, when the white men try to trick him into thinking that Harrison wants to harm him, he is wary and intelligent enough not to fall for the ruse. Later, when Harrison urges him to fight, Richard says, "'I won't fight for white men. I'm not a dog or a rooster.'" However, almost immediately afterwards, Richard agrees to fight. What caused this sudden change of mind? Call them ideologies, perhaps, but there is a combination of factors that drive Richard to fight. First of all, Richard feels a loyalty to Harrison as a co-worker and fellow "black boy," evidenced in Richard's narration: "Harrison and I knew each other casually, but there had never been the slightest trouble between us" and "Harrison if I were black and so was I; I would have ignored the white man's warning and talked face to face with a boy of my own color." Second, the ideas that the employers plant in the minds of Richard and Harrison are seeds of doubt that both men may stifle for a while, but eventually grow and flourish. Richard tells us, “We were playing with the idea of ​​death for no reason that came from our lives, but because the men who ruled us had planted the idea in our minds.” Perhaps, in these words, the fear of unemployment or, worse, death at the hands of whites, also pushed Richard to fight. In this way, Richard feels that he has "done something impure for which I [he] could not adequately atone." By fighting for white men, Richard helped maintain the status quo of superior white society. This struggle certainly maintains the status quo in Southern culture of this era. The submission of blacks to the white man was accepted and expected every day, and by allowing himself to fight, Richard feels that he has failed not only himself, but his entire dream. Throughout the book, Richard seeks to change cultural standards, and in fighting Harrison, he has given up those standards, if only for a moment, and allowed himself to help the culture he fights so hard to change. The black and white cultures, in this scenario, are both in conflict and mutually supportive. It seems that black culture supports white culture, in the sense that black boys participate in fights organized by white men. However, these struggles, at the same time, further degrade black culture. As Richard sees it, black people must escape this kind of oppression, and, for Richard, that.