Discuss the way black people are treated by white people in the short story ‘Crackling Day’ by Peter Abrahams.

         The Story actually shows us many problems they face and their lifestyle. At first the story starts by describing that Wednesday was a crackling day. This was a day where the black children would travel miles and miles to go to a white farm and pick up some pigs rind or as it is now known as today ‘crackling’. It then goes on to say how they went on to collect some cow dung immediately showing you that your lifestyle is completely different to yours. As soon as the story starts you can see that the story is going to be a grim tale.

        Then the boys aunt, before he sets off on his trek, gives him the money. From her urgency for him not to lose it you can see that the family’s struggled to support themselves and that they had a lack of money. You can also infer that the family work very hard to get the little money that they earn and so every single penny is sacred and special to them. Plus as you may well expect from people living in that society at that time the jobs they had to do were not most pleasant like collecting cow dung or washing up clothes and other items in a wash tub in the freezing cold, in the middle of dawn. This must not have been pleasant for them while the white people were doing good, clean jobs, getting the black people to do the dirty jobs because they felt that they were a lower being than them, all because the skin colour was different.

        But unfortunately this is not just how our life style differs from theirs. For example the black people have to greet the white people with the term ‘baas’ and when this does not happen there is big trouble. For example in the story when Lee finally arrives at the farm where he is yo collect the pig rind he is unaware that he has to call the man baas. What ensues is the white man staring in utter disbelief at the black boys ignorance. Then as the boy leaves with his crackling the white man stares at him, scaring him so badly that he tries not to look at him while