ersonality well into his adult life.
For Mingus, the indignities began in childhood as his parents abused him. His father was violent toward the young boy and helped create the second person noted above, the frightened animal who attacks before he is attacked. As a child, though, this frightened animal is more likely to hide:
The beatings at dawn went on for months and it got so sometimes they didn't even wake my boy. daddy would beat on his body but the child was no longer inside, he was out with me waiting till the agony was over (14).
He develops a secondary personality as a way of protecting himself, but in another way his personality remains unformed and underdeveloped, with little self-esteem and little awareness of himself as a separate entity. His school career offers a change of scene but little difference in terms of giving him a strong character: "Here went a brown baby with complexes, off to kindergarten to develop more" (12). Mingus's school life is troubled, and he is ridiculed by other pupils and teachers alike. The boy is not safe at home or at school.
The boy is also becoming aware of his race and of the position his race gives him "beneath the underdog" in American society. The reference above to the "brown baby with complexes" shows how this awareness is coupled with his diminished sense of self-esteem. He learns prejudice from his father and then from his schoolmates and others. He says of his father, "He taught race prejudice to his children- said they were better than others because they were lighter in color" (23). In th
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