Questions and Responses From Class Disscussion Board on Ragtime

Question 1). While it doesn't seem that Sarah's death was the direct result of community racism, it would be hard to argue that her death had nothing to do with race or racism. Looking closely at ch. 25, talk about some of the ways in which ideas about race and/or racist social structures contribute to Sarah's death.

Response 1). The issue of why she is there in the first place also comes from an aggravated act of racism. She went down to see James Sherman and speak on behalf of Coalhouse Walker and the altercation between him and the Emerald Island Fire House. This selection of the story had been started by blatant racism and would also end with it. As you said, and which struck me as unreal,” Her arm was extended and her black hand reached toward him. He shrank from the contact. Perhaps in the dark windy evening of impending storm it seemed to Sherman's guards that Sarah's black hand was a weapon." It reminds me of when you see the news and it is a story about a black man shot by a white police officer because the officer thought the black man was carrying a gun. The whole chapter could be quoted and explained as racist events. Back to the topic, why did he shrink from the contact? Did he think or perceive that she had a weapon? Was it just because she was black? Both maybe? I tend to lean towards that she was black and caught him off-guard. Even with a description of a dark storm ready evening doesn't make me believe that she could be thought of as having a weapon.

Question 2). In the first paragraph of ch. 23 (p. 145), the narrator tells us that Coalhouse Walker, Jr., knew that many white people were resentful of his refusal to act inferior to them: "He had created himself in the teeth of such feelings." What could this mean? Look closely at the language, and write a bit about Doctorow's word choices in the sentence I've quoted.

Response 2). When referring to the quoted text it is also good to look at the line prior. "He was not unaware that in his dress and in as the owner of a car he was a provocation to many white people. He had created himself in the teeth of suck feelings." It is these two sentences Doctorow suggests that his image (style of dress and his car) were to create such a provocation in the white America surrounding him. This isn't to say provocation of violence, but to walk the line between violence, glares and comments under their breathes. He wanted to noticed and seen by white America and create a reaction of some sort; not the reaction that displayed by the Fire House. "...and as he drove past they would fall silent and stare at him." This reaction made him feel of importance and good. It would also be his undoing. I am not saying that he deserved anything that happened to him, well baring the option of getting married and living out the rest of his life with Sarah and his child but that didn't happen. I am saying that in the writing it is said "HE had CREATED HIMSELF in the TEETH of SUCH FEELINGS" It was his choice and action to do such. Whether he did as if to say "look at what a black man can do" or to make less well-off whites feel inferior and himself feel better; it does not make what the Emerald Isle Fire House did to him right in anyway. But there is an almost an understood defiance in him as I read and interpreted it. I use defiance in terms with the time period takes place. Although in New York (Northern State) and well after the Civil War there still was racism in almost every part of the country. The word "teeth" even creates a hostile sense or a feeling of anger.