Is Troy Maxson racist?

Prompt: Is Troy Maxson racist?

A: I do not believe Troy is necessarily “racist”. I think it is more an issue for him for his race to be treated equally. There is little evidence, in my opinion, in the text that he is a racist, besides one unthreatening reference to whites as “crackers”. However, there is plenty evidence that supports he is frustrated with unequal treatment of blacks in the era in which he lived.  For example, he did not appreciate that at his job as a garbage man, whites were the ones who drove, while the blacks were the ones doing the heavy lifting. Troy brought the complaint higher up and got rewarded a position as a driver. I believe if Troy were a true racist that he would refuse to work alongside whites, if at all possible. I think it is more of a matter of bitterness toward the white man rather than hate. Also, Troy believed it to be a waste of time for Cory to play football. He has said that nothing has changed since the war, and that black men had to be twice as good as the white men to be on a sports team, and even then they would still be on the bench. He was just simply stating a fact by saying that. To me, that is not a hateful statement. I believe that his opinions are shaped from the era that he grew up in.

 I do not doubt that Troy felt resentment towards white people, and that very well could have disliked most of them (although that was not evident in the text), however;  I did not sense any true hate toward the white race in any of Troy’s conversation. If asked if I thought Troy was capable of racism, I would say yes (based on the fact he did MURDER a person, race unknown, but he did not spend life in jail, which is what I would assume would happen if he murdered a white man versus a little over a decade for a black man which society still believed was of lesser value)  but there was not any evidence in the text to support that he actually was in fact a racist, and I think if August Wilson wanted to portray him as a racist he would do so more obviously.