The corrupting influence of racism pervades the narrative from the outset. Though Pete and Liza are shown to be kind and even generous to the Black field hands living on their land, they act in ways that reflect the naivety that their being white affords them in the time and place that they live. On one level, Pete works to improve the lives of the Black people with whom he interacts; he insists that the children of his field hands attend a school that his father helped establish on the family’s land. Liza, who did not grow up around Black people, is shocked by the poverty in which many of them live and is compassionate to Pete’s Black employees. However, neither Pete nor Liza does anything to radically change the social systems that repress Black people, nor do they seem to realize that their own profitable farm and comfortable lifestyle are dependent on the subjugation of Black people.

Liza is free enough from racist beliefs to engage in an affair with Jupe. Only when she becomes pregnant does the racism of her time begin to manifest. Liza understands that whatever she says or does, giving birth to a mixed-race child would have serious repercussions; it is possible that her outraged neighbors might try and lynch Jupe or another Black man who they suspect is the baby’s father.