How we cite our quotes: (Story.Section.Paragraph) or (Story.Paragraph)
Quote #4
The white lawgivers attempted to get around assassination—which Imani considered extreme abortion—by saying the victim provoked it (there had been some difficulty saying this about Holly Monroe, but they had tried) but were antiabortionist to a man. (Abortion.55)
Imani is thinking about the death of a young girl on the day she'd graduated from high school. The response of the white community is victim-blaming at its most ludicrous. But if you pay any attention to the news today, you'll see that this response is alive and well when violence is done to the Black community.
Quote #5
You made it so clear that the black men accused of rape in the past were innocent victims of white criminals that I grew up believing black men literally did not rape white women. At all. Ever. Now it would appear that some of them, the very twisted, the terribly ill, do. What would you have me write about them? (Luna.33)
Walker is having a convo in her head with activist Ida B. Wells. She feels like she has to apologize to Wells, who spent her life trying to protect Black men from being unjustly accused of and punished for raping white women. In the process, Wells tells Black women that they must always deny the guilt of Black men—whether or not they actually committed the crime. Walker has a problem with that—because she knows now that Black men can rape white women—and she has no idea how to deal with it justly.
Quote #6
Until such a society is created, relationships of affection between black men and white women will always be poisoned—from within as from without—by historical fear and the threat of violence, and solidarity among black and white women is only rarely likely to exist. (Luna.73)
Walker is speaking of a society in which a white woman's word on rape is not the only evidence needed to convict a Black man. Until we get to that level of justice, she predicts, race relations can't progress. She feels it in her own life with Luna, whom she literally has no idea how to deal with after Luna confides in her about her own experience being raped by a Black man.