How does the young Moody understand blackness and whiteness ?

The theme of black vs. white is certainly too big to cover in great detail here, but it is an important theme of the book and should be discussed in some manner. The interesting thing about this theme is considering it from Anne Moody's point of view. As a black woman the reader may suppose that Anne will be biased towards the position of the blacks. However, Anne's story is unique because she has the ability to see both sides of the issue. She also becomes just as angry with blacks for their behavior as she does for the whites' unfair treatment of Negroes.

The civil rights movement brought out the worst in both whites and blacks. The time was volatile for both races. Whites known to fraternize or sympathize with blacks become targets of violence. Blacks who had no involvement in the movement were arrested or beaten just because they were black. Each side felt they were the "right side" but neither side was able to stand back and remain calm enough to realize that the reasons for the conflict were essentially petty.

Perhaps the best examples of the black versus white issue are Mama and the cop who follows Anne around Canton. Mama is a quintessential black woman whose main concern is for the safety of her family. The reader is never given the opportunity to learn much about Mama's personal feelings, so the reader is prevented from knowing if Mama harbors any deep seated desire to fight back like Anne does. Instead, Mama appears content to live her life in the overpowering shadow of whites and keep her opinions to herself. She is of the school of thought that things will be better once she gets to heaven and does not realize that things could be better now. Mama is the kind of easy target the Canton cop is seeking. He wants to finds someone that he can boss around and intimidate. He is the token white male. As a cop, he is in a position of power and wields that power any way he sees fit simply because he can. These two people portray the root of the struggle between whites and blacks - blacks afraid to stand up for themselves and whites eager to take advantage of that power.