How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #21
I felt that somehow they expected me to perform even those tasks for which nothing in my experience – except perhaps my imagination – had prepared me. Still it was nothing new, white folks seemed always to expect you to know those things which they'd done everything they could think of to prevent you from knowing. The thing to do was to be prepared (14.185)
The narrator says there is a double standard between white people's expectations and restrictions of black people.
Quote #22
They've tried to dispossess us of our manhood and womanhood! Of our childhood and adolescence – You heard the sister's statistics on our infant mortality rate. Don't you know you're lucky to be uncommonly born? Why, they even tried to dispossess us of our dislike of being dispossessed! And I'll tell you something else – if we don't resist, pretty soon they'll succeed! (15.49)
The narrator accuses white supremacists of taking away what rightfully belongs to the black community, yet he fails to realize the Brotherhood's part in this.
Quote #23
"Stephen's problem, like ours, was not actually one of creating the uncreated conscience of his race, but of creating the uncreated features of his face. Our task is that of making ourselves individuals. The conscience of a race is the gift of its individuals who see, evaluate, record…We create the race by creating ourselves and then to our great astonishment we will have created something far more important: We will have created a culture. Why waste time creating a conscience for something that doesn't exist? For, you see, blood and skin do not think!" (16.133)
Culture, not race, is the more important distinction to be made.
Quote #24
You my brother, mahn. Brothers are the same color; how the hell you call these white men brother? S***, mahn. That's s***! Brothers the same color. We sons of Mama Africa, you done forgot? You black, BLACK! You – Godahm, mahn! …Leave that s***, mahn. They sell you out. That s*** is old-fashioned. They enslave us – you forget that? (17.130)
Ras the Exhorter hates the fact that Clifton and the narrator are calling white men their brothers. His philosophy is black/white oriented, and he believes that black people should not even associate with white people, especially when it comes to social change.
Quote #25
Brother, This is advice from a friend who has been watching you closely. Do not go too fast. Keep working for the people but remember that you are one of us and do not forget if you get too big they will cut you down. You are from the South and you know that this is a white man's world. So take a friendly advice and go easy so that you can keep on helping the colored people. They do not want you to go too fast and will cut you down if you do. Be smart…(18.2 – 18.3)
This anonymous message generates new significance when we learn at the very end of the novel that it's from Brother Jack who is, by the way, white. Just another example of the ways that race is used as a manipulative tool in this novel.
Quote #26
I picked up the link and held it toward him, the metal oily and strangely skinlike now with the slanting sun entering the window. "Would you care to examine it, Brother? One of our members wore it nineteen years ago on the chain gang."
"Hell, no!" He recoiled. "I mean, no, thank you. In fact, Brother, I don't think we ought to have such things around!"
"You think so," I said. "And just why?"
"Because I don't think we ought to dramatize our differences." (18.84 – 18.87)
Here, the narrator encounters "forced sameness." At the same time, contrast this with Emma's comment upon meeting the narrator – that he should be "blacker."
Quote #27
Shake him, shake him, you cannot break him For he's Sambo, the dancing, Sambo, the prancing, Sambo, the entrancing, Sambo Boogie Woogie paper doll. And all for twenty-five cents, the quarter part of a dollar… Ladies and gentlemen, he'll bring you joy, step up and meet him, Sambo the – (20.71-5)
There is a lot to unpack in this brief ditty. First, it suggests resilience on the part of black people, who, "shake them" as you might, you cannot break. Second, it suggests a role of black people as entertainers – but as entertainers whose strings you can pull and control. Third, this can also be viewed as not having anything to do with race and everything to do with the narrator as Sambo, being cruelly played by others. Lastly, the ditty suggests that black people can be bought.