CHAPTER 6 - Page 91
"Then there was the burglar, "Jumpsteady." In the ghettoes the white man has built for us, he has forced us not to aspire to greater things, but to view everyday living as survival -- and in that kind of a community, survival is what is respected. In any average white neighborhood bar, you couldn't imagine a known cat-man thief regularly exposing himself, as one of the most popular people in there. But if Jumpsteady misses a few days running in Small's, we would begin inquiring for him."
White man keepin' the black man down!
The wording of this makes me think of the situation with the Native Americans. Especially with the previous descriptions of the gambling/wager/betting system. The ghettoes, which the white man built for the Negroes -- are they not the same as Indian Reservations? Both groups segregated, hated, and shut out from mainstream society; kept away from any sort of free life. The Native Americans being stripped of their land and invaded, the African Americans being taken from their land and exported to a new world where they endured the cruelvice of slavery.
Yes - there is a connection here: Native Americans and African Americans are on top of the lists, but they're not the only ones - think of Mexican-Americans, think of the Chinese.
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