lin’s Reviews > I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings > Status Update

“They basked in the righteousness of the poor and the exclusiveness of the downtrodden.
Let the white-folks have their money and power and segregation and sarcasm and big houses and schools and lawns like carpets, and books, and mostly— let them have their whiteness.
It was better to be meek and lowly, spat upon and abused for this little time than to spend eternity frying in the fires of hell.”

“People were those who lived on my side of town. I did t like them all, or, in fact, any of them very much, but they were people. These Roger’s, the strange pale creatures that lived in their alien un-life, weren’t considered folks. They were whitefolks.”

“Other than that they were different, to be dreaded, and in that dread was includes hostility of the powerless against the powerful, the poor against the rich, and the worker against the worked for and the ragged against the well dressed.
I remember never believing that whites were really real.”

“In stamps the segregation was so complete that most black children didn’t really, absolutely know what whites looked like.”

“They would have surely found Uncle Willie and just as surely lynched him.”