Native Son Race Quotes

"I don’t know. She didn’t do nothing to me." He paused and ran his hand nervously across his forehead. "She... It was... Hell, I don’t know. She asked me a lot of questions. She acted and talked in a way that made me hate her. She made me feel like a dog. I was so mad I wanted to cry... " His voice trailed off in a plaintive whimper. He licked his lips. He was caught in a net of vague, associative memory: he saw an image of his little sister, Vera, sitting on the edge of a chair crying because he had shamed her by "looking" at her; he saw her rise and fling her shoe at him. He shook his head, confused. "Aw, Mr. Max, she wanted me to tell her how Negroes live. She got into the front seat of the car where I was..."

"But Bigger, you don’t hate people for that. She was being kind to you..."

"Kind, hell! She wasn’t kind to me!"

"What do you mean? She accepted you as another human being."

"Mr. Max, we’re all split up. What you say is kind ain’t kind at all. I didn’t know nothing about that woman. All I knew was that they kill us for women like her. We live apart. And then she comes and acts like that to me."

"Bigger, you should have tried to understand. She was acting toward you only as she knew how."

Bigger glared about the small room, searching for an answer. He knew that his actions did not seem logical and he gave up trying to explain them logically. He reverted to his feelings as a guide in answering max.

"Well, I acted toward her only as I know how. She was rich. She and her kind own the earth. She and her kind say black folks are dogs. They don’t let you do nothing but what they want. . . ."

"But Bigger, this woman was trying to help you!"

"She didn’t act like it."

"How should she have acted?"

"Aw. I don’t know, Mr. Max. White folks and black folks is strangers. We don’t know what each other is thinking. Maybe she was trying to be kind; but she didn’t act like it. To me she looked and acted like all other white folks. . . ."

"But she’s not to be blamed for that, Bigger."

"She’s the same color as the rest of ‘em," he said defensively.

"I don’t understand, Bigger. You say you hated her and yet you say you felt like having her when you were in the room and she was drunk and you were drunk. . . ."

"Yeah," Bigger said, wagging his head and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Yeah; I reckon it was because I knew I oughtn’t’ve wanted to. I reckon it was because they say we black men do that anyhow. Mr. Max, you know what some white men say we black men do? They say we rape white women when we got the clap and they say we do that because we believe that if we rape white women they we’ll get rid of the clap. That’s what some white men say. They believe that. Jesus, Mr. Max, when folks say things like that about you, you whipped before you born. What’s the use? Yeah; I reckon I was feeling that way when I was in the room with her. They say we do things like that and they say it to kill us. They draw a line and say for you to stay on your side of the line. They don’t care if there’s no bread over on your side. They don’t care if you die. And then they say things like that about you and when you try to come from behind your line they kill you. They feel they ought to kill you then. Everybody wants to kill you then. Yeah; I reckon I was feeling that way and maybe the reason was because they say it. Maybe that was the reason." (3.1045-1060)