Watts article "the little man"

[jbor]

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html

Sorry, in paragraph 3 it's the "preachers" who are "urging calm". It's
"others" in Watts who are reiterating the preachers' advice in more
pragmatic terms, and where the first example of the literary "you" occurs:

    "Make any big trouble, baby, The Man just going to come back
    in and shoot you, like last time."

The "you" here is the rhetorical self-address of a young black Watts man,
and what it highlights is the fact that the bitter memory of the previous
year's battles is still at the very forefront of their minds.

best

> But if it's "the little man" and his "smiling" racism which is being
> described, [...] the fact that the rejected job
> applicant or tenant is black is *precisely* the issue; how can racial
> discrimination in this scenario be something which happens "more frequently"
> to blacks than whites? It's something which happens to blacks, period.
> Pynchon's (simple) point is that they've ended up poor because they're
> black, not vice versa.
> 
> The literary "you" is the rhetorical self-address of a young black Watts man
> throughout the entire article, and it is established in its first usage in
> the preacher's statement in paragraph 3. It's always quite easy to
> distinguish this "you" from the standard colloquial "you" which addresses
> the reader-as-hypothetical-visitor. [...]
> 
> "The Man" is the way the people of Watts think of the police; "the little
> man" is the way they think of white middle class employers, social workers,
> politicians, landlords, kerb crawlers etc etc. Pynchon's point, and it's an
> apt one, is that "besides protecting and serving the little man, the cop
> [i.e. 'The Man'] also functions as his effigy". In 1966 it's "The Man" and
> "the little man" in tandem who discriminate against black people and work
> together to keep them poor, marginalised and angry.