Norman Roselind’s fears

Norman Roselind is a famous director, but still he is very conscious about being black. He is afraid of his son and therefore tells him never to run in a white neighbourhood. When I first read about this attitude (p.143), I thought it would be exaggerated. However, the end of the book shows his fears are realistic. I believed that African American people in leading positions are not that race-conscious and anxious, but Norman Roselind is a counterexample. Probably his upbringing caused his feeling, as his mother wants Jeremiah to go out of the sun in order not to become too black. Furthermore, his mother lives in the South, thus Norman Roselind might have grown up there. In the southern states, racism was prevalent during the civil rights movement. Norman Roselind’s birth should be in or close after the 1960s, when racist ideas were still in a lot of white people’s minds. Consequently, he would have been confronted with racism in his childhood and youth. I suppose his anxieties are deep-rooted and cannot be overcome by his later career.