How we cite our quotes: The main text of the story is cited (Chapter.Paragraph). The date headers are not counted as paragraphs. The verses in the chapters with a single passage from the narrator's religious texts are cited (Chapter.Verse.Line#). In chapters with multiple passages, the verses are cited (Chapter.Verse#.Line#). The four section pages with the years and passages are cited (Year.Verse).
Quote #1
Our other adult Guardian was Joanne's father Jay. He's a good guy and a good shot. Dad likes to work with him, although sometimes there are problems. The Garfields and the Balters are white, and the rest of us are black. That can be a dangerous thing these days. On the street, people are expected to fear and hate everyone but their own kind, but with all of us armed and watchful, people stared, but they let us alone. Our neighborhood is too small for us to play those kinds of games. (4.28)
Here Lauren gives the racial demographics of Robledo. Basically, everyone is Black, except for the Garfields and the Balters. On the streets in her area, people usually ally up based on skin color, but the two Guardians or leaders are one Black guy (Reverend Olamina) and one white guy (Jay Garfield), so Robledo has some strength in diversity going. Basically, they have to be strong to survive, and that pressure has forced them to work with others who have a different skin color.
Quote #2
Bianca Montoya is pregnant.
[...]
Jorge admits to being the father. [...] At least they're both Latino. No interracial feud this time. Last year when Craig Dunn who's white and one of the saner members of the Dunn family was caught making love to Siti Moss who's black and Richard Moss's oldest daughter to boot, I thought someone was going to get killed. Crazy. (8.2-3)
So even in 2025, people are still fighting over interracial relationships. That's pretty sad. With recent changes in tolerance such as the federal legalization of gay marriage, do you think ethnic divides will still be a thing in the near future, or not?
Quote #3
The two movers were a black and a white, and I could see that Cory considered that hopeful. Maybe Olivar wouldn't be the white enclave that Dad had expected. (13.12)
One of the reasons Reverend Olamina was opposed to moving to Olivar was that he thought the company town might be full of white people. But Cory was more into the idea of moving there, so she's glad to see that the movers who come for the Garfields consist of both a Black person and a white person. When you're in a new area, is the skin color of people around you one of the first things you notice? Why or why not?
Quote #4
Zahra grunted. "Mixed couples catch hell whether people think they're gay or straight. Harry'll piss off all the blacks and you'll piss off all the whites. Good luck." [...]
"We can be a black couple and their white friend." (15.55-58)
Once again, interracial romantic relationships are bothering people despite it being 2027—the discrimination is even so bad that Zahra fears it'll lead to them getting assaulted or killed. So Lauren comes up with a scheme: they'll travel in disguise, as a Black couple, with Lauren masquerading as a male who's Zahra's boyfriend. And they'll be traveling with a white friend, Harry Balter. What are the downsides of this scheme, if any? Does it work at all?
Quote #5
But I've never walked a freeway before today. I found the experience both fascinating and frightening. In some ways, the scene reminded me of an old film I saw once of a street in mid-twentieth-century China—walkers, bicyclers, people carrying, pulling, pushing loads of all kinds. But the freeway crowd is a heterogeneous mass—black and white, Asian and Latin, whole families are on the move with babies on backs or perched atop loads in carts, wagons or bicycle baskets, sometimes along with an old or handicapped person. Other old, ill, or handicapped people hobbled along as best they could with the help of sticks or fitter companions. Many were armed with sheathed knives, rifles, and, of course, visible, holstered handguns. The occasional passing cop paid no attention. (15.100)
What Lauren describes here is basically a stream of refugees fleeing destroyed areas in hopes of better lives elsewhere. When push comes to shove, all the boundaries that used to separate people seem to fall apart to some extent, and everyone's now part of the streaming heterogeneous mass: a bunch of people of whatever skin colors, black and white, Asian and Latin, etc.
Quote #6
"All of a sudden you're a Good Samaritan," Harry said. But he didn't mind. There was no disapproval in his voice.
"It was the baby, wasn't it?" Zahra asked.
"Yes," I admitted. "The family, really. All of them together." All of them together. They had been a black man, a Hispanic-looking woman, and a baby who managed to look a little like both of them. In a few more years, a lot of the families back in the neighborhood would have looked like that. hell, Harry and Zahra were working on starting a family like that. And as Zahra had once observed, mixed couple catch hell out here. (17.57-59)
While migrating north with Lauren, Harry and Zahra remark on our narrator's shift toward being more welcoming to strangers. In this case, that fact that the strangers were racially mixed was a big factor in why Lauren chose to help them. Often, empathy and compassion spring up when we see something of ourselves in the other person. People not of the dominant race usually have to work harder to survive, and perhaps that explains why Lauren cares about these strangers more.
Quote #7
"There aren't many black people up that way, are there?" I asked.
"Not many," he agreed. "My sister hasn't had much trouble, though." (22.34-35)
When Lauren and Bankole are talking about the possibility of settling on his land, she wants to know what the racial makeup of the area is like. They're both Black, but there aren't many Black folks in the area where he owns land. They eventually start Acorn on Bankole's place, which is in northern California. In real life, the Pacific Northwest region (Acorn is pretty close to that) is populated predominantly by white people.
Quote #8
The two scared people turned out to be the most racially mixed that I had ever met. [...] The woman had a Japanese father, a black mother, and a Mexican husband, all dead. (23.86)
Here, Lauren welcomes Emery and her daughter Tori. Once again, one of the factors encouraging Lauren to help strangers is their ethnic diversity. Almost everyone in Parable of the Sower has to struggle to survive, but perhaps minorities suffer more; so maybe Lauren sees some strength in those individuals. Welcoming them into her community can then strengthen Earthseed itself.
Quote #9
"None of this is new." Bankole made himself comfortable against me. "In the early 1990s while I was in college, I heard about cases of growers doing some of this—holding people against their wills and forcing them to work without pay. Latins in California, blacks and Latins in the south....Now and then, someone would go to jail for it." (23.114)
This near-future sci-fi novel depicts scary situation for minority workers, but a lot of it is founded on reality. Consider, for example, the Bracero Program decades ago.
Quote #10
"My brother-in-law had a hard time before people began to get used to him, and he moved up here before things got so bad. He knew plumbing, carpentry, electrical work, and motor vehicle mechanics. Of course, it didn't help that he was black. Being white might help you win people over faster than he did." (25.29)
This is Bankole talking to Harry about the area where his (Bankole's) land is located. Bankole says it's harder for Black people to succeed in this place, and that he, Harry, might have an easier time since he's white. It's definitely true that life is often more difficult for minorities, but a comparison between Bankole's brother-in-law—who no one has met but Bankole—and Harry might not be so helpful. Eventually, Harry and Bankole both decide to stick it out at this location, and they help Lauren establish the first Earthseed community.