[gmw]

Originally Posted by latepaul

I don't understand how anyone can say it's not about race. The plot literally disappears without it. Does it cover every aspect of the mixed race experience? Of course not, it's just one rather short book, but if you tried to take out all the elements that relate to race you'd have precious little left.[...]

The secret in the story is that Carla is passing as white, and her husband hates Negroes. But it is possible to replace that secret and keep the rest of the plot. One strange one I saw in a show the other day was that the woman was hiding the fact that she had been the childhood murderer of someone her husband knew ... or something like that (I might mixing up multiple shows). The point is that the secret is the mechanism, not the plot; just as a knife is the murder weapon not the murder mystery.

Which doesn't mean it's not about race, there are other statements about race in the book, and there is the definite impression that the author contrived this situation to say something about race, but it comes together in such an unusual way that actually saying the book is about race seems misleading. The story doesn't say much about the difficulties of passing as white (aside from worrying what colour the kids are going to be, the story makes it look easy), nor do we see concerns of being alienated from the black community (it doesn't seem to have done any harm to the three we meet in this story), but it does say several things about how race is used in personal relationships within the black community.

Originally Posted by latepaul

[...] I must admit I pictured the scene with Jack across the room from Clare and so didn't consider him a possible 'pusher'. Looking at it again it does say he "pushed past them all into the room and strode towards Clare". However it also says that Felise put herself between Clare and Jack, and we don't see her step or pushed aside after that.

The book doesn't explicitly say that Jack pushed past Felise, but it does say (immediately after the paragraph you quoted):

Before them stood John Bellew, speechless now in his hurt and anger. Beyond them the little huddle of other people, and Brian stepping out from among them.

I read "Before them" as meaning that Bellew had kept coming. That need not be the case, but the next sentence starts "Beyond them", which seems to include Bellew in this separation of the three from the main group. So that is how I came to conclude Clare, Irene and Bellew were in a group together, away from the others, but it's not the only way to read it; even if Jack kept coming, there is nothing there that says he was close enough to push Clare, that was an assumption on my part.

However, if we accept Clare and Irene as standing separate to everyone else then the only way that other group will not see Irene push Clare will be if Irene is between Clare and the group, and has her back to the group, in which case it becomes difficult to read those paragraphs from Irene's perspective (she won't see "Brian stepping out" if her back is to the group), and that would be inconsistent with how the story has been told.