I think that Richard is facing a difficult time in his life. He was going to apply for a job after the 8th grade, to work at a sawmill, but he denied a job after a worker showed him how dangerous the mill was, since he was missing three fingers! A while afterward, he found out that some white guys killed one of his black classmates. They only did it on the assumption that was fooling around with a white prostitute. This only added to the bad idea of white, and white opression.
When he returns home, Uncle Tom thinks that he is a bad influence on his kids, so he orders them to avoid and stay away from Richard.
Richard was then names Valedictorian of his class. But the principal said that he couldnt give his own speech because there were going to be white people present. The plan was for Richard to hand the principal his own speech so he can say it. He threatened him by saying that if Richard refused to do this, he wouldnt let him graduate. On the day of graduation, Richard made his own speech, and at the end he immediately ran out of the auditorium passing by all of the handshakes and ignoring the applause. I think that as he was growing up, and after this event, he finally saw how the world around him truly "operated". But the only thing was, that after his audience saw a black boy give a good speech, it had a major positive effect on the environment, but nevertheless he hated the entire world at this point.