“The people here don’t understand you. The rest of the nation doesn’t understand you. Okies, I mean.” He tugged at his shirtsleeves. “They have no idea what it’s like. What you’re like. They just see a flood of people coming into their neighborhoods, begging for handouts they don’t have the money to give, a problem they don’t have time to fix.”
Again, not excusing bad behavior but at least shining a light on the rationale of the time. The entire country may not have been in the Dust Bowl, but they were all in a Depression, and charity was hard to come by when there was so little to sustain, let alone give.
