If He Hollers Let Him Go

“Ben was standing in the opening, grinning at me. He was a light-brown-skinned guy in his early thirties, good-looking with slightly Caucasian features and straight brown hair. He was a graduate of U.C.L.A. and didn’t take anything from the white folks and didn’t give them anything. If he had been on the job for more than nine months he’d probably have been the leaderman instead of me; he probably knew more than I did, anyway. I grinned back at him. He said, ‘Tough, Bob, but you got to take it.’”

This passage demonstrates one of the first instances of Bob acknowledging color prejudice in the novel. He assumes that, because Ben is lighter-skinned, he is probably more capable than Bob. He also recognizes that Ben can get away with standing up to white people more easily because they also show more respect to lighter-skinned Black people. Ben states an unfortunate consequence of one of the themes of the novel: Because racism is systemic in America, a Black man like Bob just has to passively take the way white people treat him.

“I wanted him to feel as scared and powerless and unprotected as I felt every goddamned morning I woke up. I wanted him to know how it felt to die without a chance; how it felt to look death in the face and know it was coming and know there wasn’t anything he could do but sit there and take it like I had to take it from Kelly and Hank and Mac and the cracker bitch because nobody was going to help him or stop it or do anything about it at all.”

Bob is thinking about how he wants to kill Johnny Stoddart, the white man who knocked him out during a crap game. Bob explains how, by killing Johnny, he wants to show him exactly what it feels like to be a Black man in a white man’s world. His tangled feelings of Masculinity, Emasculation, and Rage will be a throughline of the novel.

“There’s one goddamned thing, you can’t take your color with you, until I felt only a cold disdain.”

Still ruminating on killing Johnny Stoddart, Bob takes comfort in the fact that, when a person dies, there is no chance of them finding advantage over other people based on the color of their skin anymore.

“I was going to kill him if they hung me for it, I thought pleasantly. A white man, a supreme being. Just the thought of it did something for me; just contemplating it. All the tightness that had been in my body, making my motions jerky, keeping my muscles taut, left me and I felt relaxed, confident, strong. I felt just like I thought a white boy oughta feel; I had never felt so strong in all my life.”

Bob is thinking about killing Johnny Stoddart, the white man who knocked him out during a game of craps. Bob finds comfort and strength in the possibility of killing Johnny because he feels as if killing Johnny would give him the kind of power over a white man that white men always have over Black men: power to ruin their lives or even to get them killed.

“I got a funny thought then; I began wondering when white people started getting white—or rather, when they started losing it. And how it was you could take two white guys from the same place—one would carry his whiteness like a loaded stick, ready to bop everybody else in the head with it; and the other would simply be white as if he didn’t have anything to do with it and let it go at that.”

Bob is contemplating how whiteness manifests itself as an attitude and state of mind while he gives a ride to a couple of white youths. Bob finds he enjoys his time driving around LA with the white boys; they make jokes and laugh and have a conversation. Given that these boys are much younger than the white folks Bob typically interacts with, it prompts him to consider what makes a white person use his whiteness to oppress and discriminate against people of other races, and why some white people are not as prejudiced.

“‘I’m tryna turn white,’ I laughed.

‘I wouldn’ be s’prised none, lil as it’s said,’ she cracked back.

‘You know how much I love the white folks,’ I said; I couldn’t let it go.

‘You ain’t saying it, either,’ she kept on. ‘All that talking you do ‘bout ‘em all the time. I see you got the whitest colored girl you could find.’

‘Damn, you sound like a black gal,’ I said, a little surprised. ‘I thought you liked Alice.’

‘Oh, Alice is fine,’ she said. ‘Rich and light and almost white. You better hang on to her.’”

This conversation between Ella Mae, Bob’s dark-skinned roommate, and Bob provides another example of color prejudice among Black people: Ella Mae appears to be jealous of Alice because she is lighter-skinned and, thus, more desirable to men like Bob. Ella Mae seems to think that Alice is more desirable to Bob not only because her skin is a lighter color, but also because it is almost white, and white women are the most desirable women. Bob also begins to show some of his own confusion about how he feels about whiteness, too. Although he hates white people, it is clear he also wishes that he could experience the same privileges that they do in the world. He experiences something similar to these privileges when he is with Alice due to the lightness of her skin, which he enjoys.

“‘Bob, you frighten me. You’ll never make a success with that attitude. You mustn’t think in terms of trying to get even with them, you must accept whatever they do for you and try to prove yourself worthy to be entrusted with more.’ Now she was completely agitated. ‘I’m really ashamed of you, Bob. How can you expect them to do anything for you if you’re going to hate them?’”

During a conversation with Alice’s mother, Mrs. Harrison, she chastises Bob for suggesting that he is happy because he has found a way to get even with white people. Mrs. Harrison exposes her troubling perspective that Black people should accept the way white people treat them. The fact that Mrs. Harrison believes that white people will help Black people if Black people just show respect and try to prove themselves worthy demonstrates her ignorance about what life is like for working-class, uneducated, and poor Black men and women in the city. Mrs. Harrison’s family is wealthy and well-respected in Los Angeles white society; her understanding of what experiencing discrimination is like for most Black folks is clearly limited. Bob does not appreciate her perspective.

“‘White people are trying so hard to help us, we’ve got to earn our equality. We’ve got to show them that we’re good enough, we’ve got to prove it to them. You know yourself, Bob, a lot of our people are just not worthy, they just don’t deserve any more than they’re getting. And they make it so hard for the rest of us.’”

Mrs. Harrison shows her own prejudicial attitude here. She blames her own race for the way that white people treat them. She apparently believes that people should not be treated equally based on their intrinsic worth as a human beings, but that Black people should learn to act like white people in order to prove themselves worthy of equality. Mrs. Harrison’s attitude toward Black people hints at Alice’s attitude toward Black people as well, which is a primary source of conflict for Bob and Alice.

“‘But I really thought you liked to go to places like this,’ I said.

She said without thinking, ‘But, Bob, with you everybody here knows just what we are.’”

While on a date with Bob at the fancy hotel that only wants to serve white people, Bob asks Alice why she is not enjoying herself on their date. She finally admits what Bob has suspected all along: that she does not want to appear in white society with a Black man because white folks will realize that she is Black, too. Alice is often able to pass for a white woman when she is in white society, and she feels that the dark color of Bob’s skin and his belligerent attitude associate her with Blackness in a way that she does not like. All of Bob’s troubles with Alice are rooted in this attitude that she has, wanting Bob to act more like a white person so that she can avoid the discomfort of discrimination.

“When I picked up the bill I read the two typed lines: We served you this time but we do not want your patronage in the future. I started to get up and make my bid, to do my number for what it was worth. But when I looked at Alice I cooled. I could take it, I was just another n*****, I was going to lynch me a white boy and nothing they could do to me would make a whole lot of difference anyway.”

When Bob and Alice go to dinner at the fancy hotel, the hotel staff sends them a message on their bill telling them that they will not serve Bob and Alice again in the future. Bob knows that what they mean is that they do not want to serve Black people. This passage exemplifies the tension and pressure that Bob feels when he is with Alice: Though his impulse is to fight back, to contest the discriminatory practices of the hotel restaurant, Bob knows that Alice would never approve of this response to discrimination. She would rather him act respectably and, as her mother previously expressed, simply take the discrimination in hopes that his respectable behavior would earn him points with the white folks in the future. In this moment, the only thing that comforts Bob is his plan to kill Johnny Stoddart. His fantasy of killing Stoddart gives Bob control—something he does not have during the situation at the restaurant hotel.

“Tebbel stepped from one of the shower nooks where he’d been standing and Ben gave him a glance and kept on. ‘One thing…You’ll never get anything from these goddamn white people unless you fight them. They don’t know anything else. Don’t listen to anything else. If you don’t believe it, take any white man you know. You can beg that son of a bitch until you’re blue in the face. Argue with him until you’re out of breath and no matter how eloquent your plea or righteous your cause the only way you’ll ever get along with that son of a bitch is to whip his ass—excuse me, ladies.’ He looked around defiantly. ‘Bob’ll tell you that’s right. Isn’t that right, Bob?’

‘That’s right.’ I said.”

Ben’s statement in this scenario sums up how Bob feels Black people should handle discrimination, and it also highlights how different his perspective is from Alice’s and her family’s. Like Ben, Bob believes that arguing with white people or begging them through respectable behavior will not change the way they view Black people; it will not erase racism or discrimination. No matter what Alice wants Bob to believe, and no matter what Alice’s mother says, Bob believes that fighting and resisting is the only way to get white people to change.

“So it wasn’t that Madge was white; it was the way she used it. She had a sign up in front of her as big as Civic Centre—KEEP AWAY, N******, I’M WHITE! And without having to say one word she could keep all the white men in the world feeling they had to protect her from black rapists.”

For Bob, Madge’s attitude is yet another example of a white person using whiteness to harm and oppress Black people. Bob even suggests that what he dislikes about her is not the fact that she is white, but the way that she uses her whiteness. This ability of Madge’s to make white men feel that they need to protect her from Black men is what truly scares Bob.

“White came back into his soul; I could see it coming back, rage at seeing a n***** threatening him. Now he was ready to die for his race like a patriot, a true believer. I could see in his mind he wanted to kill me because I had seen him lose it. He hunched his shoulders, bowed his head, and started into me. And then he lost his nerve. He shook himself steady, straightened up, looked around for a weapon. He didn’t see any, so he said, ‘I’ll fight you.’

I smiled at him. ‘I don’t want to fight you,’ I told him. ‘I want to kill you. But right now I’m saving you up.’”

In this passage, Bob has just gone to find Johnny Stoddart to confront him and kill him. While Bob is often enraged himself, it is clear from his encounter with Johnny that Black folks are not the only ones harboring rage toward another race. Bob associates the whiteness of Johnny’s soul with the rage that compelled him to knock Bob out and spout racist slurs at him. Given the violence of Johnny’s behavior as a product of his rage, this encounter problematizes Alice’s perspective that Bob should act like white folks in order to earn their respect. This raises questions of whose rage is justified and what they are allowed to do with it.

“‘It’s just that white people is white. We’re different frum colored people. The Lord God above made us white and made you folks colored. If He’da wanted to, He coulda made you folks white and us people colored. But he made us white ‘cause He wanted us the same color as Him. ‘I will make thee in My Image,’ He said, and that’s what He done.’”

Madge’s sister-in-law is explaining to Bob that he—and all Black people—should just accept that they are intrinsically different from white folks. However, she does not just mean that the color of their skin is different; given the Christian image of God as a good and righteous being, it can be assumed that Madge’s sister-in-law believes that white people are intrinsically good because they are made in God’s image, that they are worthier, in a cosmic/religious sense, than Black people. One might wonder if Madge shares this belief with her sister-in-law and if that inspires her questionable behavior toward Bob.

“‘All right, rape me then, n*****!’ Her voice was excited, thick, with threads in her throat. I let her loose and bounced to my feet. Rape—just the sound of the word scared me, took everything out of me, my desire, my determination, my whole build-up. I was taut, poised, ready to light out and run a crooked mile. The only thing she had to do to make me stop was just say the word.”

When Madge dares Bob to rape her, he knows what the underlying meaning of her threat is: If Bob rapes her, he will get lynched. Bob’s fear at the very sound of a white woman uttering the word “rape” is justified; it shows that he recognizes that the word of a white woman alone could be enough to get him lynched.

“But I couldn’t let her get away with it. I didn’t want her to have that satisfaction. So I said coldly and deliberately in a hard, even voice: ‘You look like mud to me, sister, like so much dirt. Just a big beat bitch with big dirty feet. And if it didn’t take so much trouble I’d make a whore out of you.’”

After Madge dares Bob to rape her in her hotel room, Bob cannot let her get away with the underlying threat implied by her dare. Bob insults her in the most severe way he knows how: by telling her that the pure, beautiful whiteness she is so proud of is obscured by darkness, like the color of mud or dirt. Bob wants to humiliate her and degrade her, and though he will not do so by raping her, he does insult her in the meanest way he can think of—by comparing her to a Black person.

“I knew with the white folks sitting on my brain, controlling my every thought, action, and emotion, making life one crisis after another, day and night, asleep and awake, conscious and unconscious, I couldn’t make it. I knew that unless I found my niche and crawled into it, unless I stopped hating white folks and learned to take them as they came, I couldn’t live in America, much less expect to accomplish anything in it.”

The day after Bob goes to “visit” Madge, he wakes up with a hangover that finally gives him what he refers to as clarity. The only way for Bob to get what he wants—to achieve the American Dream—is to accept and make peace with the oppressiveness of white society.

“I’d settle for a leaderman job at Atlas Shipyard—if I could be a man, defined by Webster as a male human being. That’s all I’d ever wanted—just to be accepted as a man—without ambition, without distinction, either of race, creed, or color; just a simple Joe walking down an American street, going my simple way, without any other identifying characteristics but weight, height, and gender. I knew that that was at the bottom of it all. If I couldn’t live in America as an equal in the minds, hearts, and souls of all white people, if I couldn’t know that I had a chance to do anything any other American could, to go as high as an American citizenship would carry anybody, there’d never by anything in this country for me anyway.”

Bob frames his ultimate desire as wanting to be accepted as a “regular” American man. However, what Bob really means is that he wants equality; he wants to be left alone long enough to have the chance to achieve what a white man can achieve, to do anything any other American can. As long as he is judged on the basis of being a Black man, none of this will ever be possible—a testament to the state of American Equality and Systemic Racism.

“A guy couldn’t live like that, I knew. I couldn’t, anyway. There wasn’t enough of me; there wasn’t enough of any man, just by himself. And as long as I was black I’d never be anything but half a man at best.”

This quote showcases how the prospect of giving in and adhering to the white folk’s system—working within it in the way that Alice wants him to—makes Bob feel as if his masculinity is being stripped from him. In a world that caters to whiteness, Bob feels his Blackness will always make him less of a man in the sense that he will have less control over his own destiny and well-being.

“Finally I said seriously, ‘I know. I wonder what’s the matter with me, myself. Everything I do or say seems wrong. But I don’t do it deliberately, it just turns out that way.’

‘Your only trouble is maladjustment, darling,’ she said. ‘Please don’t think I’m trying to rub it in, but there’re simply no other words to express it. You don’t try to adjust your way of thinking to the actual conditions of life.’”

Alice shows what she really thinks about Bob’s belligerent attitude and penchant for fighting back against injustice. She feels that if Bob just changed his mentality about “the actual conditions of life,” he would not feel so upset and angry all the time. She believes that if a Black person makes peace with the conditions of life within an unjust system, their problems will be solved. It is clear that Alice desperately wants Bob to make peace with these conditions so that they can get married and live a life that mostly ignores the negative conditions of life.

“‘But, darling, all of life is not commercial. The best parts of it are not commercial. Love and marriage, children and homes. Those we control. Our physical beings, our personal integrity, our private property—we have as much protection for these as anyone. As long as we conform to the pattern of segregation we do not have to fear the seizure of our property or attack upon our persons.’”

Alice further demonstrates how her class shields her from the material issues that working-class Black people experience daily. She tells Bob that there are certain aspects of life—like one’s family, one’s virtues, or one’s spirituality—that the white folks cannot control, and that those are the most important things in life. She even suggests that those things are far more important than the “commercial” aspects of life, like which part of town one can live in, which restaurants one can eat in, and what one’s title is at one’s job. In suggesting this, Alice shows that she has no idea just how much the commercial aspects of life affect one’s ability to take control of the non-commercial aspects in positive and productive ways. She does not understand that, in being oppressed and discriminated against in the commercial aspects of life, Bob is deeply troubled and unhappy, leaving him unable to make positive decisions about the non-commercial aspects of his life.

“Without moving she said in a low flat voice, ‘I’m gonna get you lynched, you n***** bastard.’”

When Bob goes to make peace with Madge in the interest of honoring Alice’s wishes, Madge tries to seduce him. Bob tells her he does not want her, and she flies into a rage, seemingly in disbelief that a Black man would have the nerve to refuse the opportunity to be with a white woman. In threatening to get Bob lynched, Madge shows that she is fully aware of the fact that the system will favor her word—the word of a white woman—over Bob’s. Beyond that, her use of the term “lynching” reminds readers that this has been the case for Black men and women for centuries. Madge’s warning of lynching is more than a threat; she knows that if she tries to get him lynched, the justice system will allow her to succeed.

“But now I was scared in a different way. Not of the violence. Not of the mob. Not of physical hurt. But of America, of American justice. The jury and the judge. The people themselves. Of the inexorability of one conclusion—that I was guilty. In that one brief flash I could see myself trying to prove my innocence and nobody believing it. A white woman yelling, ‘Rape,’ and a Negro caught locked in the room. The whole structure of American thought was against me; American tradition had convicted me a hundred years before. And standing there in an American courtroom, through all the phony formality of an American trial, having to take it knowing that I was innocent and that I didn’t have a chance.”

It is here that Bob finally realizes that he has no chance of beating the racist social system he lives in, and his understanding of systemic racism comes into full view. When he leaves the hospital after being beaten and is told by the guards that he will most likely spend 30 years in prison, he understands that he is not just afraid of white people—he is afraid of America. Bob finally sees the attitude of whiteness not just embedded in individual people, but also in the entire system and national tradition that should pursue justice and fairness for all of its citizens.