How we cite our quotes: (Entry. Paragraph)
Quote #1
She offered, as her part of the project, her willingness to lead, with our three children, the unsatisfactory family life of a household deprived of husband and father. (2.12)
This is really the one time that we kind of get to see things from Griffin's wife's point of view. Sure, he's going out having fun with his experiment, but she's just at home raising her children as a suddenly single mother. Not so much fun.
Quote #2
His questions had the spurious elevation of a scholar seeking information, but the information he sought was entirely sexual, and presupposed that in the ghetto the Negro's life is one of marathon sex with many different partners, open to the view of all; in a word, that marital fidelity and sex as love's goal of union with the beloved object were exclusively the white man's property. (13.51)
Families humanize people. Everyone has one, so it's an easy way to find something in common with just about everyone else. You know, like commiserating over noogies from your big brother. This guy that Griffin meets says that he's not racist, but it's obviously not true. One way we know that is that he sees black people as people without families. In other words: not quite human.
Quote #3
I knew that what he really meant was that Negroes grew up seeing it from infancy. He had read the same stories, the same reports of social workers about parents sharing a room with children, the father coming home drunk and forcing the mother onto the bed in full view of the young ones. I felt like laughing in his face when I thought of the Negro families I had known already as a Negro: the men on the streets, in the ghettos, the housewives and their great concern that their children "grow up right." (13.56)
If Griffin is right, and black families are just as concerned about their children being raised correctly as white families, what prevents the truth from being heard? Where do these stories that the man Griffin is hitchhiking with repeats come from?