Speech

Wright is justified in refusing to say the speech by the standards that we instill in children today, but to say that he is justified in refusing it in general assumes truths that may not have been accepted at the time of the speech. The White people in the audience would rather have the blacks completely subordinate, and anything that suggests that black people are like white people would threaten the White person's self justification of the discrimination towards blacks. Because in his society the white opinion is what matters, in his current situation, Wright may not have been justified in his rejection of the speech because it offended the white population and served as a rupture in the status quo. If one is to accept that the races are equal, Wright has perfect justification in his refusal to read the speech that would be less offensive to the white people, but in a world in which only the white are permitted to determine what is justifiable, he was certainly not justified in straying at all from the path in which the white people would prefer him to take.