flowers pg 100 - 150

            What is the significance of the car salesman? At first I thought the car salesman was just another character in the book but one can see as the novel unfolds that he symbolizes more. In the book when Bud and Mary come over for dinner Cloyd mentions that Pink paid him all cash when he moved in, and ever since then he was still coming up with the rent money in cash. Cloyd approves of this obviously because cash in his hands is a good feeling, and he is not going to deny anybody the delight of paying him. How ever there are some bad things about Mr. Pink, mainly that he seems to attract the company of block folks. This is bad because now Cloyd has a reason to love him and he has  a reason to hate him, he loves that he gets paid in full cash on time every month, but Cloyd is extremely prejudice and does not hide it well, if at all. Cloyds prejudice in the book comes out many a time, I can recall him taking a shot at Mexicans right in front of Sonny saying, “they multiply like Mexicans…” and once he caught himself he quickly looked over at Sonny to see what his reaction was. I imagine Cloyd as being a Cowboy, from a southern state either Alabama or Texas, and raised among all whites. So much so that any minority in society seems out of place to him, and that is why it is so easy for him to spot them and then continue to hate them. It is always on his mind how there are minorities doing white mans work now and they are starting to move around his neighborhoods. The thought of coexisting with a minority is appauling and Cloyd wants no part in it. He gets a sort of power trip out of hating them because he does have the power to deny them living at his complex.

            The car salesman also represents the integration between whites and blacks. He himself is black, but because he is albino, his skin color is white; so he can pass of in society as white even though he has some African American features. This is a huge advantage because he has rights! The fact that Pink (who is really black but actually white)lives at the complex with a racist land lord, means that he is trying to move up because even though Cloyd is racist, Los Flores is a nice apartment complex, so we must recognize Pinks efforts to do better for himself. And for his fellow blacks as well, he tries to get a friend of his who is black to live with him until they get found out and then kicked out. If things went the right way though then Pink would have been the connection between the African American Community and better living. To me it is a very honorable thing to do to try to change racism, so I give Pink props for even trying to make it at Los Flores.