james bradley

chapter 4 quotation

“What do I know about life? I stayed here. You have to go away to know about life. There’s no life here. There’s nothing but ignorance here. You want to know about life? Well, it’s too late. Forget it. Just go on and be the nigger you were born to be, but forget about life.”

Both men believe that the opportunity to live life to its fullest is an important component of human dignity. This help explain why Grant is initially unwilling to teach Jefferson he believes that dignity is impossible without opportunity.

chapter 5 quotation

“I read the story and reread the story, but I still could not find the universality that the little Irishman had spoken of. All I saw in the story was some Irishmen meeting in a room and talking politics. What had that to do with America, especially with my people? It was not until years later that I saw what he meant ... I began to listen, to listen closely to how they talked about their heroes, to how they talked about the dead and how great the dead had once been. I heard it everywhere.”

While Grant is almost certainly alluding to the importance of heroes more generally, the inconsistency here is itself notable, since it reveals the distance of Robinson and Louis from the everyday experiences of the black people in the quarter.

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