Mimi dated thereafter her consciousness of being coloured from September, nineteen hundred and six. For her the old order had passed, she was now definitely of a race set apart. At times this created within her moods of introspection which veered dangerously near the morbid. At other times it inculcated a deep and passionate scorn of those who were her own and her race’s oppressors. She chuckled when she read or heard of or saw their imbecilities, their shortcomings. She looked with scorn on their provincialism, their stupidity, their ignorance. Conversely, she found herself magnifying the virtues, the excellencies of her own people and, at the same time, she tried to explain away through a process of subtle sophistry all their faults.
In time the continuation of these practices began to work a decided and noticeable change in her outlook on life in general. She found herself in time thinking of practically all things, it mattered not what their nature nor how remotely connected with race or colour problems they were, in terms of race or colour. This distorted vision seriously handicapped her but she was unaware of it for it coincided so completely with the viewpoints of her friends. “Poor white trash” became the ultimate of scorn, of contumely, of disparagement. In marked contrast with her former jovial and friendly manner she became almost malicious in little cruelties to tradesmen, to hucksters, to clerks in stores who happened to be white. In these episodes she took acute delight in the fact that her cream-coloured skin, her Gallic name and her French accent gave her immunities she might not have possessed had she been more distinctly Negro.
When first she had come to Atlanta she had been captiously critical of the foibles and petty vices of her new friends. She had recoiled from their