In Master Harold and the Boys, written by Athol Fugard, and 5th Avenue, Uptown: A letter from Harlem, by James Baldwin, many issues concerning the effects of racism are brought to our attention. Both authors express many of the same concerns, but express their ideas quite differently. Fugard expresses his thoughts using a play, but James Baldwin takes a more direct approach by using an essay. Regardless of the style of writing, both Fugard and Baldwin address issues concerning the coexistence of blacks and whites. The black people of South Africa and Harlem are victim to financial aspects of racial discrimination, lacking employment opportunities, and thus forced to work low paying jobs. Such an existence, based upon racial segregation and uneven distribution of opportunity, constitutes an environment which implants seeds of prejudice into innocent future generations.
             In both, 5th Avenue, Uptown: A letter from Harlem and Master Harold and the Boys, the environments described are those of deeply rooted black suppression. South Africa and the ghettos of Harlem are environments in which black people are disadvantaged and handicapped from the beginning. Baldwin uses terms like "fishhooks" and "barbed wire" to describe the way of life on 5th Avenue. He wants to portray the ghetto as a place one cannot escape, surrounded by metaphorical "barbed wire", and an atmosphere full of traps, which will hook and mangle even the most innocent. Baldwin states, "if one is a member of a captive population, economically speaking, one's feet have simply been placed on a treadmill forever. One is victimized, economically, in a thousand ways – rent, for example, or car insurance." (Baldwin p.235) He is saying that the people in Harlem's ghetto are confined to inadequate jobs, which do not provide enough money to move out of a state of destitution. Baldwin compares a person, who is confined to the gh...