Keywords

Any time a character's possible racial ancestries is germane to the text. J. Burgers

Whenever characters feel a relationship or shared purpose with another character due to racial affinity. In the specific example, Lucius imagines that Ned and Minnie have some type of relationship because they are both African-American (117). JB

Any time in the text during which different races meet in the same space and have a friendly, uncharged interaction. The specific example is the horse race in The Reivers.

Created to capture the pervasive patterns of difference caused by race - specifically, that the white hunters in "Race at Morning" carry good guns while Simon carries an old "britchloader slung on a piece of plow line" (298). Could also be used to capture what Bayard calls the "arrangements" between him and Ringo, etc. SR

This tag is used when a white character's appearance or behavior is associated with "blackness." Examples: when Jason Compson says in The Sound and the Fury that Miss Quentin's promiscuous behavior means she is "acting like a nigger" (181) or when Vardaman Bundren notes how his brother Cash's injured foot and his brother Jewel's burned back are turning black, "like a nigger's foot" or back (224). The trope isn't simply descriptive: it implies a loss of status, a threat to one's racial identity.

Whenever a white and black character cannot be distinguished from one another, or when a white character looks black and vice versa. I'm thinking here of Uncle Willy and Secretary in the plane in "Uncle Willy", "Uncle Willy and Secretary side by side and looking exactly alike, I don't mean in the face but exactly alike two tines of a garden fork look exactly alike before they chop into the ground" (244). JB