Who is Middle-aged White Man from Travels with Charley: In Search of America and what is their importance?

Steinbeck meets the middle-aged White man at a lunch counter. The man symbolizes the White side of the dying Old South. He detects sympathy for the civil rights movement from Steinbeck and starts to shout similar things that the author had heard from the Cheerleaders and the angry mob in New Orleans. Steinbeck finally orders the White man out of the truck. T