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They always took her for an Italian, a Spaniard, a Mexican, or a Gypsy.
She wished to find out about this hazardous business of “passing,”
The impulse passed, obliterated by her consciousness of the danger
It was, Irene thought, unbelievable and astonishing that four people could sit so unruffled, so ostensibly friendly, while they were in reality seething with anger, mortification, shame.
She was bound to her by those very ties of race which, for all her repudiation of them, Clare had been unable to completely sever.
if a man calls me a nigger it’s his fault the first time, but mine if he has the opportunity to do it again.”
until some ‘shine’ took a shot at him for casting an eye towards his ‘sheba’?
I’ve no intention of being the link between her and her poorer, darker brethren.
“It’s funny about ‘passing.’ We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it.
It’s not safe. Not safe at all.”
This, Irene told her, was the year 1927 in the city of New York, and hundreds of white people of Hugh Wentworth’s type came to affairs in Harlem,
everything must be paid for.
Race! The thing that bound and suffocated her.
