Pressure to Cover Take 2

What does Griggs mean by ‘learn how to live in the south’?

Wright certainly is an interesting character. He keeps on going out and getting another job, but then he quits. He keeps losing jobs because he does now want to buy into the system; he doesn’t want to be stepped on by whites. It goes back to his conversation with his principal in the previous chapter when he calls him a “bought man”. Wright tells his principal that the white society has bought him out and be has become part of the system of repression. Wright doesn’t want to allow that to happen to him.

So when he gets a job from his buddy Griggs, he tells him straight up that the reason why he can’t keep a job is because Wright needs to learn how to live in the south. Griggs tells him that although he doesn’t believe in the system he needs to at least at like it - which is to say Wright needs to act as though a regular black person in that time would. He needs to put himself below whites or else he will in fact get lynched. This really upsets Richard because it’s giving in and that is everything he is against. He tries but he simply can’t cover who he is.