"The image of a black girl caused a distant excitement in him, like a far-away light; but again the excitement was more like pain." 

Baldwin foregrounds Jesse's arousal at dehumanizing, sexual violence against black people by opening the short story with this incident. The short story concludes with Jesse's final fantasy: that he is a black man having sex with Grace, his white wife.

"And he was a good man, a God-fearing man, he had tried to do his duty all his life." 

Jesse, having been indoctrinated into the myth of white supremacy since birth, believes that his duty is to keep black people subordinate to white people. Jesse also believes that black people inherently act against God.

"They were animals, they were no better than animals, what could be done with people like that?" 

Lacking both empathy and an understanding of the structural racism that caused rural black Americans to live in poverty, Jesse strips the black population in his town of their humanity. He also blames them for their living conditions, and accuses black people of laziness and poor hygiene.