Black people are trash. They cannot do anything. They will always submit to the white man. The white man does not care about what the blacks do as long as they do not approach the whites. That is the view of the time in the Native Son. Bigger, even though accidentally, manages to violate this relationship in every single form. He attempts to take sexual advantage over a white woman, kills her, burns her body, takes her money, and then tries to get out of the predicament.
On a social level, Bigger has trespassed his boundaries too far. To take advantage of a drunk white woman is already a ticket to getting killed. Sexual relations between whites and blacks are frowned upon, and in this case, the white person did not even agree to have sex, which in other words, is rape. Even before the rape, Bigger acts friendly with two white people. Blacks should always be inferior to whites, but Bigger shatters this concept and talks to Jan and Mary without honorifics.
On a more universal level, a person has killed another person, and that by itself is intolerable. But in this case, a black man has killed a white woman. A black man, a man who is inferior to whites, has killed a white woman. This shatters every rule the white man has set forth to contain the black man. Earlier in the novel, Bigger even states that white men don't care what happens between black men, but once that shifts to black committing a crime against whites, they start caring.
I do think Bigger realizes what he has done. "She was dead; she was white; she was a woman; he had killed her; he was black; he might be caught; he did not want to be caught; if he were they would kill him." (Wright 89) The quote explains that Bigger knows the consequences and the social barriers that he has violated. If not, he would not be able to say "They can't say I did it. If they do, they can't prove it" at the end of Book One because he would not know the social barriers that could help him.
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