“Equal chance to pursue happiness means an equal crack at the dough, don’t it?” These words from Sugar in this short story describes if given a chance to create one’s own happiness doesn’t mean being wealth or not. It means one knows how to create that happiness the best way they can. The Lesson is set in Harlem and narrated by a little girl named Sylvia. Ms. Moore, Sylvia, and a group of her other classmates go to a high class toy store in Manhattan called F.A.O Schwarz. While there the children learn an important lesson about the economy and how unfair it is in the black communities. Having unjust economic and social system creating unfair access to money and resources for black Americans is a prevalent theme in the story “The Lesson”.
The difference between black society and white society is the lifestyles and what each class finds more important or necessary. In this wealthy white neighborhood it is common to spend obscene amounts of money on toys and really anything a black poor family would deem unnecessary for the price. They compare the handcrafted fiberglass sailboat, which costs $1,195, to the ones they make from a kit, which cost about 50 cents. Sylvia further thinks about what her family could buy with the $35 a clown costs: bunk beds, a family visit to Grandaddy out in the country, even the rent, and the piano bills. For one thing Sylvia states “…Where we are is who we are, Miss Moore always pointin out. But it don’t necessarily have to be that way…”(39). When Sylvia reiterates what Ms. Moore has said before it means that people’s lives and personalities are molded by the status and atmosphere in which they live. The children’s perspective on life is opposed from those that shop at F.A.O Schwartz, because of their poor upbringing. “One major point of the story is the criticism of a capitalist society, in which wealth is unequally distributed”(Champion). Wealth and race are essentially linked therefore making it hard for white people and African-American people to live under the same status of wealth thus African Americans being different.
The individual societies can affect the way children see the world and others. “Imagine for a minute what kind of society it is in which some people can spend on a toy what it would cost to feed a family of six or seven”(391). Under those circumstances it could put children in a different mindset thinking only the rich are white and only the poor are black. From my own personal experience I believed that at one point. My family and I were not considered “working poor” or “poverty level”, however I still posited that any kid in my neighborhood or I could never be as rich. Being wealthy was exclusively a dream. Think of the diverse communities as a big cake. Whites get 75% of the cake being their ability to do everything under the sun with little to no worries while 25% is left for all the other minorities to split amongst themselves equally. Therefore needing a more efficient way in the hope that all children of each race are able to have their equal slice of the cake. As Smith mentioned in Short Stories for Students that “Bambara believed that African Americans needed to pursue a policy of resistance against the racism inherent in American society”.
Toni Bambara dug deep into the different societies of rich and poor families showing the different thinking styles of the children living in impoverished circumstance against the rich. When Sylvia reiterates what Ms. Moore has said before it means that people’s lives and personalities are molded by the status and atmosphere in which they live. The children’s perspective on life is opposed from those that shop at F.A.O Schwartz, because of their poor upbringing. Under those circumstances it could put children in a different mindset thinking only the rich are white and only the poor are black. Having unjust economic and social system creating unfair access to money and resources for black Americans is a prevalent theme in the story “The Lesson”.
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