“It wasn't just this street that she was afraid of or that was bad. It was any street where people were packed together like sardines in a can. And it wasn't just this city. It was any city where they set up a line and say black folks stay on this side and white folks on this side, so that the black folks were crammed on top of each other—jammed and packed and forced into the smallest possible space until they were completely cut off from light and air. It was any place where the women had to work to support the families because the men couldn't get jobs and the men got bored and pulled out and the kids were left without proper homes because there was nobody around to put a heart into it. Yes. It was any place where people were so damn poor they didn't have time to do anything but work, and their bodies were the only source of relief from the pressure under which they lived; and where the crowding together made the young girls wise beyond their years. It all added up to the same thing, she decided—white people. She hated them. She would always hate them.” CitiesPovertyRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksSegregationRace RelationsWhitesNeighborhoodsOvercrowding Book:The Street Source: The Street
“Well, of course," Camilo said, and grinned back at JohnRolandJoseph and his long line of bought and paid for ancestors, as friendly and unselfconscious as though all her life she had been looking for men, black men, big black men--plantation bucks (stud) look at his thighs, look at that back, look at his dingle-dangle--as though all her life she had been looking for colored men to whom she was not married, to whom she would never be married because she was already married to a nice young white man, as though all her life she had told uniformed monkeys who pulled elevators in rundown colored hotels, in Harlem, that she couldn't find, had lost, misplaced, a gentleman of color named Williams.” WomenRelationshipsAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesAffairsBlack MenWhite Women Book:The Narrows Source: The Narrows
“Lutie watched her from the front porch. Damn white people, she thought. Damn them. And then—but it isn't that woman's fault. It's your fault. That's right, but the reason Pop came here to live was because he couldn't get a job and we had to have the State children because Jim couldn't get a job. Damn white people, she repeated.” JobsWorkRaceAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhites Book:The Street Source: The Street
“And she got the feeling that Boots Smith's relationship to this swiftly moving car was no ordinary one. He wasn't just a black man driving a car at a pell-mell pace. He had lost all sense of time and space as the car plunged forward into the cold, white night. The act of driving the car made him feel he was a powerful being who could conquer the world. Up over hills, fast down on the other side. It was like playing god and commanding everything within hearing to awaken and listen to him. The people sleeping in the white farmhouses were at the mercy of the sound of his engine roaring past in the night. It brought them half-awake—disturbed, uneasy. The cattle in the barns moved in protest, the chickens stirred on their roosts and before any of them could analyze the sound that had alarmed them, he was gone—on and on into the night. And she knew, too, that this was the reason white people turned scornfully to look at Negroes who swooped past them on the highways. 'Crazy niggers with autos' in the way they looked. Because they sensed that the black men had to roar past them, had for a brief moment to feel equal, feel superior; had to take reckless chances going around curves, passing on hills, so that they would be better able to face a world that took pains to make them feel that they didn't belong, that they were inferior. Because in that one moment of passing a white man in a car they could feel good and the good feeling would last long enough so that they could hold their heads up the next day and the day after that. And the white people in the cars hated it because—and her mind stumbled over the thought and then went on—because possibly they, too, needed to go on feeling superior. Because if they didn't, it upset the delicate balance of the world they moved in when they could see for themselves that a black man in a ratclap car could overtake and pass them on a hill. Because if there was nothing left for them but that business of feeling superior to black people, and that was taken away even for the split second of one car going ahead of another, it left them with nothing.” MenDrivingDriversSuperiorityAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsInferiorityBlack Men Book:The Street Source: The Street
“Queer how that was always cropping up. Here she was highly respectable, married, mother of a small boy, and, in spite of all that, knowing all that, these people took one look at her and immediately got that now-I-wonder look. Apparently it was an automatic reaction of white people—if a girl was colored and fairly young, why, it stood to reason she had to be a prostitute. If not that—at least sleeping with her would be just a simple matter, for all one had to do was make the request. In fact, white men wouldn't even have to do the asking because the girl would ask them on sight. She grew angrier as she thought about it. Of course, none of them could know about your grandmother who had brought you up, she said to herself. And ever since you were big enough to remember the things that people said to you, had said over and over, just like a clock ticking, 'Lutie, baby, don't you never let no white man put his hands on you. They ain't never willin' to let a black woman alone. Seems like they all got a itch and a urge to sleep with 'em. Don't you never let any of 'em touch you.' Something that was said so often and with such gravity it had become a part of you, just like breathing, and you would have preferred crawling in bed with a rattlesnake to getting in bed with a white man. Mrs. Chandler's friends and her mother couldn't possibly know that, couldn't possibly imagine that you might have a distrust and a dislike of white men far deeper than the distrust these white women had of you. Or know that, after hearing their estimation of you, nothing in the world could ever force you to be even friendly with a white man. And again she thought of the barrier between her and these people. The funny part of it was she was willing to trust them and their motives without questioning, but the instant they saw the color of her skin they knew what she must be like; they were so confident about what she must be like they didn't need to know her personally in order to verify their estimate.” SexRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsStereotypesWhites Book:The Street Source: The Street
“You've driven one of these before." "Yeah." One of these, nice way to put it. Oh, you've held a tennis racket before, oh, you've worn shoes before, oh, you've used a toothbrush before. Bug Eyes is a weisenheimer but he was right. The lady is white. That surprised condescension in the voice is an unmistakable characteristic of the Caucasian, a special characteristic of the female Caucasian. The funny thing is they don't even know they do it.” RaceMen And WomenBlacksRace RelationsWhitesCondescensionWhite Women Book:The Narrows Source: The Narrows
“A cop on a motorcycle roared alongside, waved them to the curb. 'Goin' to a fire?' he demanded. He peered into the car and Lutie saw a slight stiffening of his face. That meant he had seen they were colored. She waited for his next words with a wincing feeling, thinking it was like having an old wound that had never healed and you could see someone about to knock against it and it was too late to get out of the way, and there was that horrible tiny split second of time when you waited for the contact, anticipating the pain and quivering away from it before it actually started. The cop's mouth twisted into an ugly line.” RaceRacismPoliceAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesCopsInstitutional Racism Book:The Street Source: The Street
