In this quote, Hurston suggests that African Americans have to always be aware of how much of themselves they reveal to the white man. The racial politics described here indicate that white people demand much of African Americans, and to maintain the peace, African Americans compromise by giving them some of that, but they still maintain their own inner lives so that they do not feel "owned" by white people.

The passage begins with the speaker saying, "The white man is always trying to know into somebody else's business." This quote establishes the idea that white people, being the race with the most power and influence at the time, expect that they can and should know everything about everyone else; the quote phrases this idea as through the white man thinks this is his right. However, the black man has a strategy to deal with this: "All right, I'll set something outside the door of my mind for him to play with and handle."

The compromise is that he will give the white man something, enough to make him think that he has some kind of inner knowledge of the black citizen. However, the black man will not allow him to truly get inside of his mind: "He can read my writing but he sho' can't read my mind." The white man can access what the speaker gives him access to, in his "writing," but there is no way for him to access the depth of the speaker's mind. The speaker continues by using some figurative language: "I'll put this play toy in his hand, and he will seize it and go away." Comparing the information given to the white man by the speaker to a "play toy" suggests that the white man's insistence on owning the black man's thoughts and inner lives is immature and that the white man is easily fooled. Once he leaves, the black man can be himself: "Then I'll say my say and sing my song." His "say" and his "song" are the forms of expression through which the black man taps into his true inner self. The white man cannot have access to this.

A useful comparison to this passage is Ellison's Invisible Man, wherein the narrator, a young African American man, joins the Brotherhood, an organization headed by powerful white men who supposedly want to help aid racial equality. The organization wants to own the narrator, giving him a new name and engineering his speaking topics and platforms. They even instigate a riot in Harlem. It turns out that the Brotherhood may not have had the narrator's best interest at heart; they only wanted to use him to further their agenda. The speaker in Hurston's story also recognizes the white man's potential to exploit African Americans.

The passage also reminds me of Langston Hughes's poem "I, Too." In the poem, the speaker describes how he is being discriminated against. He has to go "eat in the kitchen / When company comes," but while he is isolated, he is also gathering his strength. He says he will "grow strong," and that some day, the white man will "be ashamed" for not treating him like an equal human being. Hurston's speaker also distinguishes between what he can and will do in front of the white man and what he does on his own.