Class influences voting, but its effect is usually combined with the influence of some other factor, like region or religion (123).
Social Class and Voting – Roskin
Native Son – 3
Bigger thinks to himself “Poor white people are stupid,” because they haven’t prospered, even though they have the social advantage of being white. His mother has given him the impression that wealthy white people like black people better than they like poor white people.
Native Son – 6
When he’s in his apartment with his family, after visiting the Dalton’s home, Wright writes about Bigger, “He hated this room and all the people in it, including himself.” This may help to explain why he hated Gus, whose fear reminded him of himself. Bigger also thinks to himself that he and his family might be forced to live this way because they’d never “done anything, right or wrong, that mattered much.” Conservatives might agree with this opinion. Liberals might believe the inverse of Bigger’s thought, that his family had never done anything that mattered because they lived in stultifying conditions.
Native Son – 12
Bigger feels secure in the fact that Mrs. Dalton won’t ask him certain questions about her daughter because “She would be ashamed to let him think that something was so wrong in her family that she had to ask him, a black servant, about it.” This maintenance of distance between people that is based on race and class keeps Bigger from being suspected of his crime. It keeps him Invisible.