Sonny blue help

Racism is the dark undercurrent that flows through "Sonny's Blues". It is rarely referenced directly but its pull can be felt continuously. For example, Baldwin mentions decrepit housing projects that rise out of Harlem like "rocks in the middle of the boiling sea" (112). The result of local and federal segregationist housing policies, the projects represent the impact of racism on a down-trodden community. Likewise, much of the narrator's anxiety on behalf of his students can be attributed to the fact that they, like Sonny, are young African American men living in a system that ruthlessly and endlessly discriminates against them.

Much of the darkness and suffering in the story referred to can be attributed to the effects of racism; the narrator speaks of suffering as something inherited from one generation to the next in the African American community. The constant and vague influence of racism finally becomes explicit and clear when the narrator's mother explains how drunken white men murdered her brother-in-law. She warns the narrator that a similar fate could befall Sonny, demonstrating her concern that racism is still a very real threat to the family.