Having said that, I believe Persia is also a reflection of many places in our country. And you know, this is a part of my own personal prejudice, that all universality begins with very concrete provinciality in a sense. Persia is a place unique, yes, and yet somehow familiar. In 1962, there would be nothing innocent about Earnest March's gesture, brief and covert though it was. As a small child growing up in the 1960s, I remember the racial barriers, but what I remember more was this air of paranoia that would make such a gesture unthinkable.
Race plays an inevitable part of our lives, even if implicitly.
Ellen Douglas described this wonderfully in one of her books, and I'm paraphrasing here. She said race was the background bass against which her characters danced the boogie. Particularly stories like Welty's A Memory, where the external act and human imagination meet and mingle in subtle ways. I just read Michael Ondaajte's Anil's Ghost, a fine book, though I must admit I don't have as much time to read as I'd like.