He had been fleeing, police explained. The juxtaposition seemed to explain exactly why black voices are so angry. The berserk mother is not remembered as the source of evil. The slave catcher is. In addition to not getting it about slavery, whites don't get it about black life in America today.
Whites typically imagine that the humiliations of savage racial injustice are a thing of the past.
The children are saying you are not listening. His traffic violations themselves reveal the awful truth. We have a ghost in here. The character was speaking of Cincinnati, but the ghost roams widely. America's laws once allowed slavery.