Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The truth is that Lawrence was deliberately formed and deliberately used, and, at that moment, superbly executed the real intentions of the state which had formed him. So, after all, do most of us, without even knowing it: sometimes, the unexpected results-given the short-sightedness of states, and statesmen-are immedi ate, immense, and retaliatory. For example, there may, one day, be a film, called Chamberlain, at Munich, in which we will learn, for the first time, of the mortifications Chamberlain endured and which compelled him, as Prime Minister of En gland, to sell, as it turned out, all of Europe to the then German Chancel lor, in order to protect his island. Looking for all the world like the school boy he never ceased to be, he proclaimed to cheering crowds, upon his return from Munich, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!" The crowds were cheering their own impending ordeal: one wonders how many of them survived the rage which their loyal schoolbo y, superb epitome of themselves, had just un leashed against them. * 54-2 THE DE VIL FIND S WORK In 19 52, I was in America, just in time for the McCarthy era. I had never seen anything like it. If I had ever really been able to hate white people, the era of that dim witted, good-natured, flamboyant representative of the American people would have been pure heaven: for, not even the most vindictive hatred could have imagined the slimy depths to which the bulk of white Americans allo wed them selves to sink: noisily, gracelessly, flatulent and foul with patriotism. Though cowardice was certainly the most vividly recognizable color in the tapestry, it was not mere cowardice one was watching, but something much worse, an absolute panic, absolutely infantile. Truman, the honest haberdasher and machine- made politician, in whose wisdom we had dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, had been elected Presi dent the year (1 94-8) that I left America. Subsequently, my countrymen (who were still arguing among themselves as to this relationship-th eir relationship, that is, to blacks) decided to entrust their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, not once, but twice, to Daddy Warbucks Eisenhower, who had nothing against McCarthy, and who was Papa to Richard Nixon. I began to feel a terrified pity for the white children of these white people: who had been sent, by their parents, to Korea, though their parents did not know why. Neither did their parents know why these miserable, incontestably inferior, rice-eating gooks refused to come to heel, and would not be saved.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  In the 1950s and 1960s, civil rights activism and new federal laws inspired the same resistance to racial progress and once again led to a spike in the use of Confederate imagery. In fact, it was in the 1950s, after racial segregation in public schools was declared unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, that many Southern states erected Confederate flags atop their state government buildings. Confederate monuments, memorials, and imagery proliferated throughout the South during the Civil Rights Era. It was during this time that the birthday of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, was added as a holiday in Alabama. Even today, banks, state offices, and state institutions shut down in his honor. At a pretrial hearing, I once argued against the exclusion of African Americans from the jury pool. In this particular rural Southern community, the population was about 27 percent black, but African Americans made up only 10 percent of the jury pool. After presenting the data and making my arguments about the unconstitutional exclusion of African Americans, the judge complained loudly. “I’m going to grant your motion, Mr. Stevenson, but I’ll be honest. I’m pretty fed up with people always talking about minority rights. African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans…When is someone going to come to my courtroom and protect the rights of Confederate Americans?” The judge had definitely caught me off guard. I wanted to ask if being born in the South or living in Alabama made me a Confederate American, but I thought better of it. — I stopped in the prison yard to take a closer look at the truck. I couldn’t help walking around it and reading the provocative stickers. I turned back toward the front gate of the prison, trying to regain my focus, but I couldn’t make myself indifferent to what I perceived were symbols of racial oppression. I had been to this prison often enough to be familiar to many of the correctional officers, but as I entered I was met by a correctional officer I’d never seen before. He was a white man of my height—about six feet tall—with a muscular build. He looked to be in his early forties and wore a short military haircut. He was staring coldly at me with steel-blue eyes. I walked toward the gate that led to the lobby of the visitation room, where I expected a routine pat-down before entering the visitation area. The officer stepped in front of me and blocked me from proceeding. “What are you doing?” he snarled. “I’m here for a legal visit,” I replied. “It was scheduled earlier this week. The people in the warden’s office have the papers.” I smiled and spoke as politely as I could to defuse the situation. “That’s fine, that’s fine, but you have to be searched first.”

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I asked, “So you have no interest in investigating what Darnell Houston is saying about the possibility that the State’s main witness may be lying?” “Ralph Myers is the State’s main witness.” It was clear that Chapman had looked more deeply into the case than he had initially claimed. “Without Hooks’s testimony, the conviction wouldn’t be valid,” I said, leveling my voice. “Under the State’s theory, Myers is an accomplice, and state law requires confirmation of accomplice testimony, which can only come from Hooks. Mr. Houston says that Hooks is lying, which makes his testimony a critical issue that should be heard in court.” I knew I was right. The law was as clear as it possibly could be on this question. But I also knew that I was talking to someone who didn’t care what the law said. I knew that what I was saying wouldn’t persuade Chapman, but I felt the need to say it anyway. Chapman stood up. I could tell he was annoyed by my lecturing and legal arguments, and I was pretty sure he thought I was being pushy. “That sounds like an issue you’ll need to raise on appeal, Mr. Stevenson. You can tell Mr. Houston that the charges against him are being dropped. I can do that for y’all, but that’s about it.” His tone was dismissive, and when he turned his back to me I knew he’d ended the meeting and was now eager to get me out of his office. I left his office extremely frustrated. Chapman had not been unfriendly or hostile. Yet his indifference to McMillian’s innocence claim was hard for me to accept. Reading the record had shown me that there were people who were willing to ignore evidence, logic, and common sense to convict someone and reassure the community that the crime had been solved and the murderer punished. But talking face-to-face with someone about the case made the irrational thinking swirling around Walter’s conviction much, much harder to accept. Chapman hadn’t prosecuted the case, and I had hoped that he might not want to defend something so unreliable, but it was clear that he was locked into this narrative just like everyone else who had been involved. I’d seen the abuse of power in many cases before, but there was something especially upsetting about it here, where not only a single defendant was being victimized but an entire community as well. I filed my stack of motions just to make sure that if they didn’t dismiss the charges they knew we would fight them. Walking down the hallway to my car I saw yet another flyer about the next production of To Kill a Mockingbird, which just added to my outrage. — Darnell had remained home after he posted bond.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they dis tinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression. In the American context, the most ironical thing about Ne gro anti-Semitism is that the Negro is really condemning the Jew for having become an American white man-f or having become, in effect, a Christian. The Jew profits from his status in America, and he must expect Negroes to distrust him for it. The Jew docs not realize that the credential he offers, the fact that he has been despised and slaughtered, docs not in crease the Negro's understanding. It increases the Negro's rage. For it is not here, and not now, that the Jew is being slaugh tered, and he is never despised, here, as the Negro is, because NEGR OES ARE AN TI-SEMITIC BEC AUSE .. . 745 he is an American . The Jewish tra,·ail occurred across the sea and America rescued him from the house of bondage. But America is the house of bondage for the Negro, and no coun try can rescue him. "What happens to the Negro here happens to him because he is an American. \Vhen an African is mistreated here, for example, he has recourse to his embassy. The American Negro who is, let us say, falsely arrested, will find it nearly impossible to bring his case to court. And this means that because he is a nati,·e of this country-"one of our niggers"-he has, effecth·ely, no recourse and no place to go, either within the country or with out. He is a pariah in his own country and a stranger in the world. This is what it means to have one's history and one's ties to one's ancestral homeland totally destroyed. This is not what happened to the Jew and, therefore, he has allies in the world. That is one of the reasons no one has ever seriously suggested that the Jew be nmwiolent. There was no need for him to be nonviolent. On the contrary, the Jewish battle for Israel was saluted as the most tremendous heroism. How can the Negro fail to suspect that the Jew is really saying that the Negro desen·es his situation because he has not been heroic enough? It is doubtful that the Jews could have won their battle had the Western powers been opposed to them. But such allies as the Negro may have are themselves strug gling for their freedom against tenacious and tremendous Western opposition. This leaves the American Negro, who technically represents the Western nations, in a cruelly ambiguous position.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Not until white boys and girls began to be hooked-not until the plague in the ghetto spread out ward, as plagues do-was there any public uproar. As long as it was only the niggers who were killing themselves and paying white folks handsomely for the privilege, the forces of law and order were sile nt. The very structure of the ghetto is a nearly irresistible temptation to criminal activity of one kind or an other: it is a very rare man who does not victimize the help less. There is no pressure on the landlord to be responsible for the upkeep of his property: the only pressure on him is to collect his rent; that is, to bleed the ghetto. There is no pres sure on the butcher to be honest: if he can sell bad meat at a profit, why should he not do so? buying cheap and selling dear is what made this country great. If the storekeeper can sell, on the installment plan, a worthless "bedroom suite" for six or seven times its value, what is there to prevent him from doing so, and who will ever hear, or credit, his customer's complaint? in the unlikely event that the customer has any notion of where to go to complain. And the ghetto is a gold mine for the insurance companies. A dime a week, for fi\·e or ten or twenty years, is a lot of money, but rare indeed is the funeral paid for by the insurance. I myself do not know of any. Some member of my family had been carrying insurance at a dime a week for years and we finally persuaded her to drop it and cash in the policy-which was now worth a little over two hu ndred dollars. And let me state candidly, and I know, in this instance, that I do not speak only for myself, that every time I hear the black people of this country referred to as "shift less" and "l azy," every time it is implied that the blacks deserve their condition here (look at the Irish! look at the Poles! Yes.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The people did not go away, of course; once a people arise, they never go away (a fact which should be included in the Marine hand book). S � he club � se, t� � - �l�o_d carn�:do\\'n,_and-his-bit terness and his anguish and his guilt were compqunded. And I have seen it in the eyes of rookie cops in Harlem rookie cops who were really the most terrified people in the world, and who had to pretend to themselves that the black junkie, the black mother, the black father, the black child were of ditlerent human species than themselves. The southern sherifi� the rookie cop, could, and I suspect still can only deal with their lives and their duties by hiding behind the color curtain-a curtain which, indeed, eventually becomes their principal justification for the )i,·es they lead. They thus will barricade themselves behind this curtain and continue in their crime, in the great unadmitted crime of what they have done to themselves. \Vhite man, hear me! A man is a man, a woman is a woman, Lchii<:L Ls ��hiJ<J. To de�i: h e se Tact'S!Si:o " o pe n tll e a oo rso n a chaos deeper and deadlier, and, within the space of a man's lifetime, more timeless, more eternal, than the medieval vision of Hell. White man, you have already arrived at this unspeak able blasphemy in order to make money. You cannot endure the things you acquire-the only reason you continually ac quire them, like junkies on hundred dollar a day habits-and your money exists mainly on paper. God help you on that day when the population demands to know what is behind that paper. But, even beyond this, it is terrif)•ing to consider the precise nature of the things you have bought with the flesh you ha\'e sold-of what you continue to buy with the flesh you continue to sell. To what, precisely, are you headed? To what human product, precisely, are you devoting so much ingenuity, so much energy? In Henry James' novel, The Ambassado1'S, published not long before James' death, the author recounts the story of a middle-aged �ew Englander, assigned by his middle-aged bride-to-be, a widow, the task of rescuing fr om the flesh-pots of Paris her onlv son. She wants him to come home to take over the directic;n of the family factory. In the e\·ent, it is the THE WHITE MAN'S GUILT 7 2 7 middle-aged New Englander, The Ambassador, who is se duced, not so much by Paris as by a new and less utilitarian view of life.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I went up to Armelia, who was sitting with the others outside the courtroom, and she looked at me with concern. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Why aren’t y’all inside the courtroom?” I looked around the lobby. If there had been a huge crowd yesterday, today’s hearing had brought more people, including several clergy members and older people of color I’d never seen before. “They won’t let us in, Mr. Stevenson.” “What do you mean they won’t let you in?” “We tried to go in earlier, and they told us we couldn’t come in.” A young man in a deputy sheriff’s uniform was standing in front of the entrance to the courtroom. I walked over to him and he put his arm up to stop me. “I want to go into the courtroom,” I said firmly. “You can’t come in.” “What do you mean I can’t come in? There is a hearing scheduled and I want to go inside.” “I’m sorry, sir, you can’t come into the courtroom.” “Why not?” I asked. He stood there silently. Finally, I added, “I’m the defense attorney. I think I have to be able to go inside the courtroom.” He looked at me closely and was clearly perplexed. “Um, I don’t know. I’ll have to go and check.” He disappeared inside the courtroom. He came back a few moments later and grinned at me tentatively. “Um, you can come in.” I pushed by the deputy, opened the door, and saw that the entire courtroom had been altered. Inside the courtroom door they had placed a large metal detector, on the other side of which was an enormous German shepherd held back by a police officer. The courtroom was already half filled. The benches that had been filled by Walter’s supporters the previous day were now mostly occupied by older white people. Clearly the people here were supporting the Morrisons and the prosecution. Chapman and Valeska were already sitting at the prosecutor’s table, acting as if nothing was going on. I was livid. I walked over to Chapman, “Who told the deputies not to let the folks outside come into the courtroom?” I asked. They looked at me as if they didn’t know what I was talking about. “I’m going to speak to the judge about this.” I spun on my heel and went directly to the judge’s chambers, and the prosecutors followed me. When I explained to Judge Norton that McMillian’s family and supporters had been told that they couldn’t come into the courtroom, even though the State’s supporters had been let in, the judge rolled his eyes and looked annoyed. “Mr. Stevenson, your people will just have to get here earlier,” he said dismissively. “Judge, the problem isn’t that they weren’t here early. The problem is they were told they couldn’t come into the courtroom.” “No one is being denied entrance to the courtroom, Mr. Stevenson.” He turned to his bailiff, who left the room.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  He had given my friend a helpful tip: if he wanted to make it in America, it would be better for him not to be seen with niggers. My friend thanked him warmly, which brought a glow, I should imagine, to his simple heart-how we adore simplicity! and has since made something of a point of avoiding white Americans. I certainly can't blame him. For one thing, talking to Amer icans is usually extremely uphill work. We are afraid to reveal ourselves because we trust ourselves so little. American atti tudes are appalling, but so are the attitudes of most of the people in the world. What is stultifYing here is that the atti tude is presented as the person; one is expected to justifY the OTH ER ESSAYS attitude in order to reassure the person-wh om, alas, one has yet to meet, who is light-years away, in some dreadful, private labyrinth . And in this labyrinth the person is desperately trying 110t to find out what he really feels. Therefore, the truth can not be told, even about one's attitudes: we live by lies. And not only , tor example, about race-whatever, by this time, in this country, or, indeed, in the world, this word may mean but about our very natures. The lie has penetrated to our most private moments, and the most secret chambers of our hearts. Nothing more sinister can happen, in any society, to any people. And when it happens, it means that the people are caught in a kind of vacuum between their present and their past-the romanticized, that is, the maligned past, and the denied and dishonored present. It is a crisis of identity. And in such a crisis, at such a pressure, it becomes absolutely in dispensable to discover, or invent-the two words, here, are synonyms-the stranger, the barbarian, who is responsible for our confusion and our pain. Once he is driven out-de stroyed-then we can be at peace: those questions will be gone. Of course, those questions never go, but it has always seemed much easier to murder than to change. And this is really the choice with which we arc confronted now. I know that these arc strong words tor a sunlit, optimistic land, h1llcd for so long, and into such an euphoria, by pros perity (based on the threat of war) and by such magazines as Reader's Digest, and stirring political slogans, and Ho llywood and television. (C ommunications whose role is not to com municate, but simply to reassure.) Nevertheless, I am ap palled- for example-by the limpness with which the entire nation appears to have accepted the proposition that, in the city of Dallas, Texas, in which handbills were being issued accusing the late President Kennedy of treason, one would need a lef tist lunatic with a gun to blow off the President's head.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  At the same time, both parties were (are) pro tected from the deepest urgencies of black need by the stance of the Federal Government, which could (can) always justifY both parties, and itself , by use of the doctrine of "States' rights." In the South, then, the Republican Party was the nigra' s friend, and, in the North, it was the Democrats who lovingly dried our tears. But, however li beral Northern Democrats might seem to be, nothing was allowed to menace the party unity-certainly not niggers-with the result that the pre sumed or potential power of the black vote in the North was canceled out by the smirk on the faces of the candidates in the South. The party had won-was in-and we were out. What it came to was that, as long as blacks in the South could not vote, blacks in the North could have nothing to vote for. A very clever trap, which only now, and largely because of the black vote in the South, may be beginning to be sprung. The American institutions are all bankrupt in that they are unable to deal with the present-r esembling nothing so much as Lot's wife. When Americans look out on the world, they see nothing but dark and menacing strangers who appear to have no sense of rhythm at all, nor any respect or affec tion for white people; and white Americans really do not know what to make of all this, except to increase the defense budget. This panic-stricken saber rattling is also for the benefit of the domestic darker brother. The real impulse of the bulk of the American people toward their former slave is lethal: if he cannot be used, he should be made to disappear. When the American people, Nixon's no-longer-silent majority, revile the Haitian, Cuban, Turk, Palest inian, Iranian, they are really cursing the nigger, and the nigger had better know it. The vote does not work for a black American the way it works for a white one, for the despairingly obvious reason that whites, in general, are welcomed to America, and blacks, in general, are not.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The cop turn around and smash him a couple of times in the head." And one of the youngsters said, "He get that just f( >r a question. No reason at all, just for a question." No one had, as yet, been charged with any crime. But the nightmare had not yet really begun. The salesman had been so badly beaten around one eye that it was found necessary 7 28 REPORT FROM OCCUPIED TERRITORY 7 29 to hospitalize him. Perhaps some sense of what it means to live in occupied territory can be suggested by the fact that the police took him to Harlem Hospital themselves-nearly nine teen hours after the beating. For fourteen days, the doctors at Harlem Hospital told him that they could do nothing for his eye, and he was removed to Bellevue Hospital, where for fourteen days, the doctors tried to save the eye. At the end of fourteen days it was clear that the bad eye could not be saved and was endangering the good eye. All that could be done, then, was to take the bad eye out. As of my last information, the salesman is on the streets again, with his attache case, trying to feed his family. He is more visible now because he wears an eye patch; and because he questioned the right of two policemen to beat up one child, he is known as a "cop hater." Therefore, "I have quite a few police look at me now pretty hard. My lawyer he axe (asked) me to keep somebody with me at all times 'cause the police may try to mess with me again." You will note that there is not a suggestion of any kind of appeal to justice, and no suggestion of any recompense for the grave and gratuitous damage which this man has endured. His tone is simply the tone of one who has miraculously sur vived-he might have died; as it is, he is merely half blind. You will also note that the patch over his eye has had the effect of making him, more than ever, the target of the police. It is a dishonorable wound, not earned in a foreign jungle but in the domestic one-not that this would make any difference at all to the nevertheless insuperably patriotic policeman-and it proves that he is a "bad nigger." ("Bad niggers," in Amer ica, as elsewhere, have always been watched and have usually been killed.) The police, who have certainly done their best to kill him, have also provided themselves with a pretext derisoire by fi ling three criminal charges against him. He is charged with beating up a schoolteacher, upsetting a fruit stand, and assaulting the (armed) police.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  (At that moment in time, the black G.I. in Europe was a genuinely disturbing conundrum.) The novel takes place in America, and the black man looks like a white man-this double remove liberating both fantasy and hope, which is, perhaps, at bottom, what pornography is all about. This is certainly what that legend created by Rudolph Valentino, in The Sheik, is all about, as is made clear by his fan mail-poor boy!-and this fantasy and hope contain the root appeal of Tarzan (King of The Apes!). Both the Sheik and Tarzan arc white men who look and act like black men-act like black men, that is, according to the white imagination which has created them: one can cat one's cake without having it, or one can have one's cake without eating it. What informs Vian's book, however, is not sexual fantasy, but rage and pain: that rage and pain which Vian (almost alone) was able to hear in the black American musicians, in the bars, dives, and cellars, of the Paris of those years. In his book, a black man who can "cross the line" sets out to avenge the murder of his younger, darker brother; and the primary tool of this vengeance is-his tool. Vian would have known something of this fr om faulkner, and fr om Richard Wright, and fr om Chester Himes, but he heard it in the music, and, indeed, he saw it in the streets. Vi an's character is eventually uncovered, but not before he has seduced and murdered two of the richest and most attractive white women he can find. He is caught, and hanged-hung, like a horse, his sex, ac- CHAPTER TWO 5 0 7 cording to Vian, mocking his murderers to the last. Vian did not know that this particular nigger would almost certainly have been castrated: which is but another and deadlier way for white men to be mocked by the terror and fury by which they are engulfed upon the discovery that the black man is a man: "it hurt," says T. E. Lawrence, in Seven Pillars of Wis dom, "that they [the negroes] should possess exact counter parts of all our bodies." Vian's social details, as concerns American life, are all askew, but he had the sense to frame his story in such a way as to prevent these details from intruding. And he gets some things right, for example, the idle, self-centered, spoiled, erotic dreaming of a certain category of American youth: there are moments which bring to mind Rebel Without a Cause. For these children, the passage of time can mean only the accel eration of hostility and despair. In spite of the book's naivete, Vian cared enough about his subject to force one into a con frontation with a certain kind of anguish. The book's power comes fr om the fact that he forces you to see this anguish from the undisguised viewpoint of his foreign, alienated own.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  While these reforms were desperately needed, deinstitutionalization intersected with the spread of mass imprisonment policies—expanding criminal statutes and harsh sentencing—to disastrous effect. The “free world” became perilous for deinstitutionalized poor people suffering from mental disabilities. The inability of many disabled, low-income people to receive treatment or necessary medication dramatically increased their likelihood of a police encounter that would result in jail or prison time. Jail and prison became the state’s strategy for dealing with a health crisis created by drug use and dependency. A flood of mentally ill people headed to prison for minor offenses and drug crimes or simply for behaviors their communities were unwilling to tolerate. Today, over 50 percent of prison and jail inmates in the United States have a diagnosed mental illness, a rate nearly five times greater than that of the general adult population. Nearly one in five prison and jail inmates has a serious mental illness. In fact, there are more than three times the number of seriously mentally ill individuals in jail or prison than in hospitals; in some states that number is ten times. And prison is a terrible place for someone with mental illness or a neurological disorder that prison guards are not trained to understand. For instance, when I still worked in Atlanta, our office sued Louisiana’s notorious Angola Prison for refusing to modify a policy that required prisoners in segregation cells to place their hands through bars for handcuffing before officers entered to move them. Disabled prisoners with epilepsy and seizure disorders would sometimes need assistance while convulsing in their cells, and because they couldn’t put their hands through the bars, guards would mace them or use fire extinguishers to subdue them. This intervention aggravated the health problems of the prisoners and sometimes resulted in death. Most overcrowded prisons don’t have the capacity to provide care and treatment to the mentally ill. The lack of treatment makes compliance with the myriad rules that define prison life impossible for many disabled people. Other prisoners exploit or react violently to the behavioral symptoms of the mentally ill. Frustrated prison staff frequently subject them to abusive punishment, solitary confinement, or the most extreme forms of available detention. Many judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers do a poor job of recognizing the special needs of the mentally disabled, which leads to wrongful convictions, lengthier prison terms, and high rates of recidivism. —

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  With the best will in the world, it is virtually impossible to watch Tony Curtis while Sidney is on the screen, or, with the pos sible exception of Lon Chaney, Jr., anyone else. It is impos sible to accept the premise of the story, a premise based on the profound American misunderstanding of the nature of the hatred between black and white. There is a hatred-certainly: though I am now using this word with great caution, and only in the light of the effects, or the results, of hatred. But the hatred is not equal on both sides, for it does not have the same roots. This is, perhaps, a very subtle argument, but black men do not have the same reason to hate white men as white men have to hate blacks. The root of the white man's hatred CHAPTER TWO 5 2 5 is terror, a bottomless and nameless terror, which focuses on the black, surfacing, and concentrating on this dread figure, an entity which lives only in his mind. But the root of the black man's hatred is rage, and he docs not so much hate white men as simply want them out of his way, and, more than that, out of his children's way. When the white man begins to have in the black man's mind the weight that the black man has in the white man's mind, that black man is going mad. And when he goes under, he does not go under screaming in terror: he goes under howling with rage . A black man knows that two men chained together ha\'e to learn to forage, eat, fart, shit, piss, and tremble, and sleep together: they arc indispensable to each other, and anything can happen between them, and anyone who has been there knows this. No black man, in such a situation, and especially knowing what Poitier conveys so vividly Noah Cullen knows, would rise to the bait proffered by this dimwitted poor white child, whose only real complaint is that he is a bona-fide mediocrity who failed to make it in the American rat-race. But many, no better than he, and many much worse, make it e\'ery day, all the way to vVashington: sometimes, indeed, via Hollywood. It is a species of cowardice, grave indeed, to pretend that black men do not know this. And it is a matter of the most disas trous sentimentality to attempt to bring black men into the white American nightmare, and on the same terms, moreo\'er, which make life for white men all but intolerable. It is this which black audiences resented about T11e Defiant Ones: that Sidney was in company far beneath him, and that the unmistakable truth of his performance was being placed at the mercy of a lie. Liberal white audiences applauded when Sidney, at the end of the film, jumped off the train in order not to abandon his white buddy.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  When I first went to death row in December 1983, America was in the early stages of a radical transformation that would turn us into an unprecedentedly harsh and punitive nation and result in mass imprisonment that has no historical parallel. Today we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world. The prison population has increased from 300,000 people in the early 1970s to 2.3 million people today. There are nearly six million people on probation or on parole. One in every fifteen people born in the United States in 2001 is expected to go to jail or prison; one in every three black male babies born in this century is expected to be incarcerated. We have shot, hanged, gassed, electrocuted, and lethally injected hundreds of people to carry out legally sanctioned executions. Thousands more await their execution on death row. Some states have no minimum age for prosecuting children as adults; we’ve sent a quarter million kids to adult jails and prisons to serve long prison terms, some under the age of twelve. For years, we’ve been the only country in the world that condemns children to life imprisonment without parole; nearly three thousand juveniles have been sentenced to die in prison. Hundreds of thousands of nonviolent offenders have been forced to spend decades in prison. We’ve created laws that make writing a bad check or committing a petty theft or minor property crime an offense that can result in life imprisonment. We have declared a costly war on people with substance abuse problems. There are more than a half-million people in state or federal prisons for drug offenses today, up from just 41,000 in 1980. We have abolished parole in many states. We have invented slogans like “Three strikes and you’re out” to communicate our toughness. We’ve given up on rehabilitation, education, and services for the imprisoned because providing assistance to the incarcerated is apparently too kind and compassionate. We’ve institutionalized policies that reduce people to their worst acts and permanently label them “criminal,” “murderer,” “rapist,” “thief,” “drug dealer,” “sex offender,” “felon”—identities they cannot change regardless of the circumstances of their crimes or any improvements they might make in their lives. The collateral consequences of mass incarceration have been equally profound. We ban poor women and, inevitably, their children from receiving food stamps and public housing if they have prior drug convictions. We have created a new caste system that forces thousands of people into homelessness, bans them from living with their families and in their communities, and renders them virtually unemployable. Some states permanently strip people with criminal convictions of the right to vote; as a result, in several Southern states disenfranchisement among African American men has reached levels unseen since before the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  We bought our clothes from a Jew and, sometimes, our secondhand shoes, and the pawnbroker was a Je w-perhaps we hated him most of al l. The merchants along 12 5th Street were Jewish-at least many of them were; I don't know if Grant's or Woolworth's are Jewish names-and I well remember that it was only after the Harlem riot of 1935 that Negroes were allowed to earn a little money in some of the stores where they spent so much. Not all of these white people were cruel-on the contrary, I remember some who were certainly as thoughtful as the bleak circumstances allowed-but all of them were exploiting us, and that was why we hated them. But we also hated the welf are workers, of whom some were white, some colored, some Jewish, and some not. We hated the policemen, not all of whom were Jewish, and some of whom were black. The poor, of whatever color, do not trust the law and certainly have no reason to, and God knows we didn't. "If you must call a cop," we said in those days, "f or 739 OTH ER ESS AYS God's sake, make sure it's a white one." We did not feel that the cops were protecting us, for we knew too much about the reasons for the kinds of crimes committed in the ghetto; but we teared black cops even more than white cops, because the black cop had to work so much harder-on your head-to prove to himself and his colleagues that he was not like all the other niggers. We hated many of our teachers at school because they so clearly despised us and treated us lik e dirty, ignorant savages. Not all of these teachers were Jewish. Some of them, alas, were black. I used to carry my father's union dues downtown for him sometimes. I hated everyone in that den of thieves, especially the man who took the envelope from me, the en velope which contained my father's hard-earned money, that envelope which contained bread for his children. "Thieves," I thought, "every one of you!" And I know I was right about that, and I have not changed my mind. But whether or not all these people were Jewish, I really do not know. The Army may or may not be controlled by Jews; I don't know and I don't care. I know that when I worked for the Army I hated all my bosses because of the way they treated me. I don't know if the post office is Jewish but I would certainly dread working for it again. I don't know if Wana maker's was Jewish, but I didn't like running their elevator, and I didn't like any of their customers.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  But this is not the story which Native Son tells, for we find here merely, repeated in anger, the story which we have told in pride. Nor, since the implications of this anger are evaded, arc we ever confronted with the actual or potential significance of our pride; which is why we fall, with such a positive glow of recognition, upon Max's long and bitter summing up. It is addressed to those among us of good will and it seems to say that, though there are whites and black s among us who hate each other, we will not; there are those who are betrayed by greed, by guilt, by bloo d lust, but not we; we will set our faces against them and join hands and walk together into that dazzling future when there will be no white or black. This is the dream of all liberal men, a dream not at all dishonorable, but, nevertheless, a dream. For, let us join hands on this mountain as we may, the battle is elsewhere. It proceeds far from us in the heat and horror and pain of lif e itself where all men arc betrayed by greed and guilt and blood-l ust and where no one's hands are clean. Our good will, from which we yet expect such power to transfc:>rm us, is thin, passionless, stri dent: its roots, examined, lead us back to our fcxebears, whose assumption it was that the black man, to become truly human and acceptable, must first become like us. This assumption once accepted, the Negro in America can only acquiesce in the oblit eration of his own personality, the distortion and de basement of his own experience, surrendering to those forces which reduce the person to anonymity and which make them selves manifest daily all over the darkening world.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The cop turn around and smash him a couple of times in the head." And one of the youngsters said, "He get that just f(>r a question. No reason at all, just for a question." No one had, as yet, been charged with any crime. But the nightmare had not yet really begun. The salesman had been so badly beaten around one eye that it was found necessary 728 REPOR T FR OM OCCUPIED TER RITORY 729 to hospitalize him. Perhaps some sense of what it means to live in occupied territory can be suggested by the fact that the police took him to Harlem Hospital themselves-nearly nine teen hours after the beating. For fourteen days, the doctors at Harlem Hospital told him that they could do nothing for his eye, and he was removed to Bellevue Hospital, where for fourteen days, the doctors tried to save the eye. At the end of fourteen days it was clear that the bad eye could not be saved and was endangering the good eye. All that could be done, then, was to take the bad eye out. As of my last information, the salesman is on the streets again, with his attache case, trying to feed his family. He is more visible now because he wears an eye patch; and because he questioned the right of two policemen to beat up one child, he is known as a "cop hater." Therefore, "I have quite a few police look at me now pretty hard. My lawyer he axe (asked) me to keep somebody with me at all times 'cause the police may try to mess with me again." You will note that there is not a suggestion of any kind of appeal to justice, and no suggestion of any recompense for the grave and gratuitous damage which this man has endured. His tone is simply the tone of one who has miraculously sur vived-he might have died; as it is, he is merely half bl ind. You will also note that the patch over his eye has had the effect of making him, more than ever, the target of the police. It is a dishonorable wound, not earned in a foreign jungle but in the domestic one-not that this would make any difference at all to the nevertheless insuperably patriotic policeman-and it proves that he is a "b ad nigger." (" Bad niggers," in Amer ica, as elsewhere, have always been watched and have usually been killed .) The police, who have certainly done their best to kill him, have also provided themselves with a pretext derisoire by filing three criminal charges against him. He is charged with beating up a schoolteacher, upsetting a fruit stand, and assaulting the (armed) police.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  In the mind of the black man the humanity of the white is never for an instant in ques tion-it is to this blind humanity, precisely, that all his plight bears witness. The questions that the Negro lives with arc how not to hate the white man, or, otherwise, how to hate him most effectively; how to fool him, cheat him, use him; how, in short, failing the possibility of a general overturn, to wrest for himself in the white man's world an honored place, or at any rate a bearable Lebensraum. For this reason the white man, in his interracial encounters, cannot fail to cause in the breast of the black a certain fury, however deeply this fury may be hidden-when, out of an innocence which can scarcely at first be believed, the white man wishes to discover the spirit, aspirations, and personal history of the black stranger before him. The black, in the face of this innocence, and observing the extent of the white man's apprehensions, cannot but feel a certain bitter superiority of his own, and a certain contempt. And he cannot but find it very nearly unforgivable that, in the mind of the white man, who has cost him so much, his own humanity should occupy so little place or such a humiliating one. This is an aspect of the interracial reality which nearly everyone in Europe has been able to ignore and which we in America, with dubious success, are perpetually wishing out of existence. But the great difference between the manifestations of race prejudice in America is involved with the power of the human personality-in this context the black personality, a phenom enon with which Europe has never had to cope. The black man in Europe does not, in the first place, live there, and, economic and military necessities aside, he is not really con sidered a European citizen. He lives in the colonies, which, whatever their importance to the economic well-being and however they may be administered, remain a matter of total indifference to the European man in the street; and he pursues in these colonies a way of life which is an utter and barbaric mystery. The Dutch Zwarte Piet is a far more genuinely myth- 60 4 OTHER ESSAYS ological figure than the American Sambo-for Black Peter has never threatened the Dutch spiritual or social well-being. He does not live in Dutch houses, or go to Dutch schools, or walk Dutch streets. Few Dutchmen, I should hazard, have ever been forced to find an answer to the exasperating ques tion as to whether or not they would let their sisters marry him.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The declaration of political points of view being thus pro hibited, the "cultural" debate which raged in the hall that morning was in peipetual danger of drowning in the sea of the unstated. For, according to his political position, each del egate had a different interpretation of his culture, and a dif fe rent idea of its fu ture, as well as the means to be used to make that future a reality. A solution of a kind was offered by Senghor's suggestion that two committees be fo rmed, one to take an inventory of the past, and one to deal with present prospects. There was some fe eling that two committees were scarcely necessary. Diop suggested that one committee be fo rmed, which, if necessary, could divide itself into two. Then the question arose as to just how the committee should be appointed, whether by countries or by cultural areas. It was decided, at length, that the committee should be set up on the latter basis, and should have resolutions drafted by noon. "It is by these resolutions," protested Mercer Cook, "that we shall make ourselves known. It cannot be done in an hour." He was entirely right. At eleven-twenty a committee of eighteen members had been fo rmed. At fo ur o'clock in the afternoon they were still invisible. By this time, too, the most tremendous impatience reigned in the crowded hall, in which, today, Negroes by fa r outnumbered whites. At fo ur-twenty five the impatience of the audience erupted in whistles, cat calls, and stamping of fe et. At fo ur-thirty, Alioune Diop 166 NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME arrived and officially opened the meeting. He tried to explain some of the difficulties such a conference inevitably encoun tered and assured the audience that the committee on reso lutions would not be absent much longer. In the meantime, in their absence, and in the absence of Dr. Price-Mars, he proposed to read a fe w messages from well-wishers. But the audience was not really interested in these messages and was manifesting a very definite tendency to get out of hand again when, at four-fifty-five, Dr. Price-Mars entered. His arrival had the etlect of calming the audience somewhat and, luckily, the committee on resolutions came in very shortly afterwards. At five-seven, Diop rose to read the document which had come one vote short of being unanimously approved. As is the way with documents of this kind, it was carefully worded and slightly repetitious. This did not make its mean ing less clear or diminish its importance.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Indeed, it was on this exclusion that the rise of this power inexorably depended; and now the excluded-"so it has been already"-whose lands have been robbed of the minerals, for example, which go into the building of railways and telegraph wires and TV sets and jet airliners and guns and bombs and fleets, must attempt, at exorbitant cost, to buy their manufactured resources back which is not even remotely possible, since they must attempt this purchase with money borrowed fr om their exploiters. If they attempt to work out their salvation-their autonomy on terms dictated by those who have excluded them, they are in a delicate and dangerous position, and if they refuse, they 404 TO BE BAPTIZED 405 are in a desperate one: it is hard to know which case is worse. In both cases, they are confronted with the relentless neces sities of human life, and the rigors of human nature. Any one, for example, who has worked in, or witnessed, any of the "anti-poverty" programs in the American ghetto has an instant understanding of "foreign aid" in the "under developed" nations. In both locales, the most skillful adven turers improve their material lot; the most dedicated of the natives are driven mad or inactive-or underground-by fr us tration; while the misery of the hapless, voiceless millions is increased-and not only that: their reaction to their misery is described to the world as criminal. Nowhere is this grisly pat tern clearer than it is in America today, but what America is doing within her borders, she is doing around the world. One has only to remember that American investments cannot be considered safe wherever the population cannot be considered tractable; with this in mind, consider the American reaction to the Jew who boasts of sending arms to Israel, and the prob able fate of an American black who wishes to stage a rally for the purpose of sending arms to black South Mrica. America proves, certainly, if any nation ever has, that man cannot live by bread alone; on the other hand, men can scarcely begin to react to this principle until they-and, still more, their children-have enough bread to eat.