Passage in Parenthesis

Wright often adds his perspective or thoughts on what he had just written in parenthesis after that passage. Wright is working in a delicatessen in a white neighborhood. He talks about how he is afraid of not knowing what type of person he is dealing with. He then speaks about how he is starting to understand why people like Shorty allowed white men to treat him poorly. He says, "While working in Memphis I had stood aghast as Shorty had offered himself to be kicked by the white men; but now, while working in Chicago, I was learning that perhaps even a kick was better than uncertainty..." Wright's goal when moving out of the South was to escape racial tensions, but he is still experiencing it and relating to what he couldn't understand previously. The feelings he has and the realization he comes to do not fulfill what he wanted out of moving to the North.