mark racism.
For example, in A Raisin in the Sun, Walter is a black man who is the victim of racism, but he is also an abuser of the women in his life. Hansberry also reveals her strong sense of feminism in her portrayal of the women who refuse to be abused by him.
We see, then, that these plays show Hansberry to be a voice of moderation in the debate over racial conflict. She is generally an optimist, believing that with encouragement and guidance and constructive criticism whites and blacks can improve their relationships with one another and with themselves, and produce thereby a more racially harmonious society.
In A Raisin in the Sun, for example, racial conflict and racism certainly do not vanish from society, but they are overcome by Walter as an individual as he enters a more enlightened state. Walter overcomes his tendency to control women; he expresses his independent manhood; and he adopts a more realistic and less materialistic attitude toward the American Dream.
What Hansberry wants above all for her black characters is dignity, growth, power, and their rightful and equal place in society and under the sun.
In A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry shows Walter to be a black man who has come to accept the racist stereotypes about blacks so much that he does even think about it anymore. He has absorbed these stereotypes into his own personality---selfishness, abuse of women, anger and bitterness which threaten to consume him alive.
As a chauffeur Walter occupies a position of subservience to whites. He has little hope of moving up in the world. He has given up and has no reason to live beyond satisfying his own needs. He is an obnoxious man who seems beyond redemption. He insults his wife Ruth relentlessly, seeing her as the supplier of food and sex for him. When she complains about his insults, he rants at her:
First thing a man ought to learn in life is not to make love to no colored woman first th...