"The Black Intellectual" and "Going to Meet the Man"

In Gerald Early's work "The Black Intellectual", the author describes the manifold issues that permeate boxing. The black fighters face being looked down upon no matter the situation- they win by fighting to the true limits of their ability and the white spectators cry that the fighter is a barbarian. They loose, and the white spectators will declare the superiority of the white boxer. The sport is a vector and puppet show for the clashes in society; blacks fight blacks for the amusement of whites in a Jim-Crow era backwater style fight or blacks fight whites- the racial tension of the nation running towards integration visible and visceral in its brutal reality. Subconscious and conscious tensions are brimming in the fight. In James Baldwin's "Going to Meet the Man", the hypersexuality that lynching and black violence has been imbued with is described. The deputy sheriff's present day issues with black rights and his own sexuality are contrasted vividly; he is frustrated by the black protesters belief in their rights, and their failure to submit. So, as he lies in bed with the white woman who he is supposed to protect, he can't have sex with her. This is contrasted with the end scene, where he has to pretend she is black, and coerce her into sex to gain that feeling of empowerment that he is being deprived of in the daylight. The snarled mess of southern white male sexuality compels him to not want to be sexual with his wife, despise black males for the fear of them touching his wife, and hypersexualize black women since he cannot view his wife in this way. The scene where these values are first planted, like a seed in the young boy, provides stark contrast with the man who is shown in the picture frame scenes at the start and end of the piece.