A Good Man is Hard to Find: Setting 1 key example

The grandmother in the story makes several racist comments over the course of the road trip, signaling that, while slavery had been abolished decades earlier, white Americans in the South in the Jim Crow era still held onto racist beliefs. This is particularly ironic because the grandmother frequently judges other people’s moral characters, believing herself to be beyond reproach. In this way, the grandmother represents hypocritical Christian white people in the South (a group O’Connor likely knew well, having grown up in this community). The following passage—which comes near the beginning of the road trip—captures this sort of hypocrisy:

“In my time,” said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, “children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!” she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. “Wouldn’t that make a picture, now?” she asked and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the back window.

Cite this Quote

Here the grandmother lectures her son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren about respect before immediately speaking about a young Black child in an objectifying and fetishizing way, referring to him as a “cute little pickaninny” and talking about photographing him for the white family's enjoyment. In this moment, O’Connor is highlighting the everyday racism in the American South in the mid-20th century.