How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"Their little friends at college told them that from what they'd said about their father, he sounded like a plantation owner living on slave labor. The girls were very excited. I meant to mention it to you, but I had so much trouble with that new hair designer that it slipped my mind. They want you to raise the salaries of those poor people or they won't come home again." (6.190)
If Mrs. Levy were really concerned about worker welfare, she wouldn't be distracted from it by a new hair designer. Civil Rights is just another excuse to snap at her husband, just as for Ignatius, Civil Rights is just an excuse to impress Myrna. Confederacy doesn't really believe in altruism; no white people in this book are going to fight for Civil Rights out of an abstract sense of justice.
Quote #8
"Who needs a girl who isn't dedicated enough to work gratis in a project that would benefit her race?" (7.261)
Myrna likes to see herself as a Civil Rights crusader, but she—like Lana—is reluctant to actually pay a black person to work, though.
Quote #9
"Ongah is real and vital. He is virile and aggressive. He rips at reality and tears aside concealing veils." (9.80)
Ongah is a Kenyan student whom Myrna briefly has a crush on. She sees Ongah as sexual and violent—and though those characteristics to her are positive, they also are based on the same kind of racist stereotypes that made the woman on the bus afraid of Jones. Myrna seems interested in Ongah not as an individual, but as an embodiment of her own ideas of blackness as authentic or real or earthy.