Watts article "the little man"

[Paul Nightingale]

Three points.

1. I've made a distinction between two scenes, one I explained
carefully, the cop-with-a-gun scene and "the little man" scene. This
distinction is justified by the text's juxtaposition of the
"respectable" employer (who has "done" nothing, as the text notes
rhetorically) to the "more dangerous" (but also "more honest") cop. One
paragraph follows the other, the text says they're different. In the
earlier cop-with-a-gun scene, paragraph 5, the NYer is free to empathise
knowing this situation isn't one they're personally familiar with (and
in my original post I did add a rider of sorts to that that statement).
In the latter scene with the employer, this is the kind of interaction
(howsoever you describe the prejudice involved) that anyone might have
experience of: this being the case, the reader might be free to
extrapolate from the racist scene as described to one they're personally
familiar with, whatever 'familiar with' means there (and this is the
meaning of "at this point", above, ie post-extrapolation). Perceived
prejudice of whatever kind, the adverse judgement that one feels is
unfair--this doesn't have to be racism.

2. As regards the first appearance of "you": this is in fact in
paragraph 5, as I stated, if one is dealing with the narrative voice
(or, if you will, narrator): in paragraph 3, "you" appears within direct
speech. I've referred throughout to its usage, starting in paragraph 5,
at the level of narration. As jbor notes, in paragraph 3 "you" means
'the black resident of Watts' (the speaker refers to "The Man"). This
being the case, the speaker isn't asking for empathy (sympathy, maybe).
However, used at the level of narration, "you" does raise the
possibility of empathy: this word's narrative function does shift as the
essay proceeds, and this is what I've been trying to analyse.

3. After a sufficient number of glances, jbor is finally "getting the
drift of [isread's 'tourist' thing]". Ever the optimist, isread has just
gone to the foot of our stairs.