Bob Jones

Juan Carlos Gomez

American History Since 1865

4/6/10

Jones’ View of Race

In Chester Himes novel If He Hollers Let Him Go, the main character Bob Jones is a man with mood swings and many different sides. The emotions he experiences in the opening pages of simply trying to get out of bed are overwhelming and quite exhausting. The rational for his behavior becomes a bit more apparent while Himes depicts Bob’s daily struggle of simply getting to work or going to a bar or any number of daily routines. The part where his character turns a corner is the afternoon he is told that he will be demoted down to a mechanic. While he is riding high on the thoughts of eliminating the white man who punched him at the dice game, he stops to pick up some young white hitchhikers. “I began wondering when white people started getting white, or rather, when they started losing it….I liked those two white kids; they were white, but as my aunt Fanny used to say they couldn’t help it.” I think that that quote is one of the most important in the book in terms of understanding the viewpoints that Jones wants to hold, but at the same time, is very hard to keep when so many of the people he interacted with had “become white” and there was little chance that they would start losing it.

Even within the African American community, Bob is unable to resolve the conflicts among the different classes in Los Angeles, such as the antagonism between the earlier, established black bourgeoisie represented by the Harrison family and the more recent, working-class black migrants flocking to wartime jobs. Bob cannot or is unable to create a coherent notion of community in 1940’s America; stripped of his future, livelihood and freedom, Bob truly believes that there is no safe place that will protect him from racial violence. I believe that his view on racism is due to his everyday struggle against whiteness as power. I cannot say whether it’s wrong or does make sense, but it’s more of a consequence...