According to "the Burden of Black Womanhood in a Male-Dominated Society"

Truman Held is a black man in the Civil Rights Movement. He is pretentious and superficial, though he is also superficially handsome. Truman loves France and the French language, and he speaks French whenever possible. He does not have any understanding of women as people, but takes them for granted as sexual partners who should be devoted to him. Meridian comes to understand that Truman wants a woman who does not think for herself and is not truly independent.

Truman is interested in white women as something novel and something he can conquer. He sleeps with Meridian, but he rejects her as a possible wife because she has been sullied. She has been married and had a child. Instead, he marries Lynne Rabinowitz, a white Jewish exchange student.