Black Boy Race Quotes Page 1
(Section.Chapter.Paragraph)
| Quote #1 It might have been that my tardiness in learning to sense white people as "white" people came from the fact that many of my relatives were "white"-looking people. My grandmother, who was white as any "white" person, had never looked "white" to me. (1.1.256) |
Richard doesn’t get it. If she looks white, isn’t that enough to make Granny be white? What else does she need? Maybe she didn’t get her Certified White Person card?
| Quote #2 I had begun to notice that my mother became irritated when I questioned her about whites and blacks, and I could not quite understand it. (1.2.121) |
It’s true that Richard is seriously annoying, but, come on. Most parents avoid "The Talk" for as long as possible—only here "The Talk" is about race, not reproduction.
| Quote #3 "Granny didn’t become colored," my mother said angrily. "She was born the color she is now." Again I was being shut out of the secret, the thing, the reality I felt somewhere beneath all the words and silences. […] "Why don’t you want to talk to me?" I asked. She slapped me and I cried. Later, grudgingly, she told me that Granny came of Irish, Scotch, and French stock in which Negro blood had somewhere and somehow been infused. (1.2.142) |
Granny’s family is like a virtual "We Are the World." So if she’s Irish, Scotch, and French, what makes her black? The One Drop Rule?
