So the situation of “the help” in Mississippi was in some ways more unbearable than ever. Their material situation was not horrible. As long as they worked, they ate; they had their own very modest homes, and so forth. And it's not like they were being worked to death as slaves sometimes were. What's gotten worse is the whites' indifference to their very being, their utter insensitivity to who they are particular beings. The upside of middle-class life is that people work for themselves, the downside is that the relations among employer and employee becomes more all about the cash at expense of any sense of personal responsibility or affection. Life in middle-class Mississippi was all about the downside in the absence of the upside.There's
