How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #10
I didn't understand in those pre-invisible days that their hate, and mine too, was charged with fear. How all of us at the college hated the black-belt people, the "peasants," during those days! We were trying to lift them up and they, like Trueblood, did everything it seemed to pull us down. (2.98)
The narrator suggests that the school's black population resent people like Jim Trueblood because their lifestyle supports the black stereotypes the students were trying to abolish.
Quote #11
How can he tell this to white men, I thought, when he knows they'll say that all Negroes do such things? I looked at the floor, a red mist of anguish before my eyes. (2.192)
The narrator is upset with Trueblood for not recognizing his responsibility as a black man to defend the black reputation. Really, really upset. He thinks in very collectivist terms, when in reality Trueblood's behavior should have no bearing on how the narrator is perceived. The narrator does not reach this individualist conclusion until much later.
Quote #12
I went to see the white folks then and they gave me help. That's what I don't understand. I done the worse thing a man could ever do in his family and instead of chasin' me out of the county, they gimme more help than they ever give any other colored man, no matter how good a nigguh he was…The nigguhs up at the school don't like me, but the white folks treat me fine. (2.254)
In Trueblood's experience, being "good" doesn't get one rewarded, but being bad does. His behavior is celebrated by the white people as justification of their bad opinion, and resented by the black people for giving their race a bad name.