Go Set A Watchman

“She wished she had paid more attention to them, but only one glance down a column of print was enough to tell her a familiar story: same people who were the Invisible Empire, who hated Catholics; ignorant, fear-ridden, red-faced, boorish, law-abiding, one hundred per cent red-blooded Anglo-Saxons, her fellow Americans—trash.” 

After reading the anti-Black propaganda she finds in her father’s study, “The Black Plague,” Jean Louise is confronted with the reality that views on white supremacy are more prevalent that she thought. This moment is her first acknowledgement that she has not been as attentive to the rising racial tension as she perhaps should have been, foreshadowing the other things that she will regret being blind to. This moment also shows her perspective and where she stands on the issue: She believes all white supremacists to be ignorant, fearful, and hateful. This opinion will cause her much suffering when she discovers that her loved ones are, to varying degrees, white supremacists.

“She heard her father’s voice, a tiny voice talking in the warm comfortable past. Gentlemen, if there’s one slogan in this world I believe, it is this: equal rights for all, special privileges for none.” 

Jean Louise tries to make sense of seeing her father in the citizens’ council, in the context of her beliefs about her father and her worldview. She recalls her father’s statement of his deepest beliefs and considers how it is the antithesis of what his presence in the council would indicate. The description of the past as “warm” and “comfortable” also foreshadows her use of denial and nostalgia as coping strategies and contrasts her comfort levels with her simple past and current complexities.