How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #10
I knew, as everyone knows, the true but incomplete statement of the problem—that an original sin of the fathers was being visited on the children of succeeding generations. I have many Southern friends, both Negro and white, many of them of superb minds and characters, and often, when not the problem but the mere suggestion of the Negro-white subject has come up, I have seen and felt them go into a room of experience into which I cannot enter. (4.2.5)
Here, it seems that the "truth" of racial inequality and its impact isn't really accessible to Steinbeck, since he hasn't lived in a context shaped by that issue. As a northerner, he believes he is barred from that kind of understanding.