Again, Hochschild emphasizes the civility and honor of the Congolese people—the Kuba tribe, for example, didn’t try to hurt Sheppard, even though he was working on behalf of European and American sponsors. Hochschild notes that the Kuba tribe respected Sheppard in part because he was black, suggesting that Sheppard’s racial identification with the Kuba tribe was mutual—both Sheppard and the Kuba felt that they belonged to the same “people.”