How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
If there was any color prejudice in Salinas I never heard or felt a breath of it. The Coopers were respected, and their self-respect was in no way forced. (4.2.8)
Musing some more about racial tensions, Steinbeck thinks a lot about the Coopers, an African American family he knew when he was growing up. Apparently, in Steinbeck's view, Salinas was pretty race blind.
Quote #5
Now, these were the only Negroes I knew or had contact with in the days of my flypaper childhood, and you can see how little I was prepared for the great world. When I heard, for example, that Negroes were an inferior race, I thought the authority was misinformed. When I heard that Negroes were dirty I remembered Mrs. Cooper's shining kitchen. Lazy? The drone and clop of Mr. Cooper's horse-drawn dray in the street outside used to awaken us in the dawn. Dishonest? Mr. Cooper was one of the very few Salinans who never let a debt cross the fifteenth of the month. (4.2.9)
Apparently, the big inequality question with respect to the Coopers was whether everyone else could measure up to the bar they had set. This is a big point of contrast to the kind of race-based assumptions about African Americans (and how they measure up to white folks) that Steinbeck sees going on now that he's left Salinas.
Quote #6
Thus it remains that I am basically unfitted to take sides in the racial conflict. I must admit that cruelty and force exerted against weakness turn me sick with rage, but this would be equally true in the treatment of any weak by any strong. (4.2.12)
This is hardly a rallying cry for civil rights (and problematic in its total confidence in the weakness of African Americans), but Steinbeck is basically trying to say that he doesn't approve of the "cruelty" and "force" being used against African Americans in this "racial conflict."