Contempt

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)

  But I trotted off to the Mathurin Theatre to sec it, taking along a gallant lady friend. And we sutTercd NO NA ME IN THE STREE T through this odd and interminable account of the sins of a white Southern lady, and her cardboard husband, and the nig ger-whore-dope fiend maid, Nancy. Nancy, in order to arrest her mistress's headlong flight to self -d estruction-to bring her to her senses-murders the white lady's infant. This may seem an odd way of healing the sick, but Nancy is, in fact, the Christ figure, and has taken her mistress's sins on herself. Why? Nancy has enough sins of her own, which on the whole would seem to be rather more interesting, and the lady she takes such drastic means of saving is too dull, and much, much too talkative-in a word, too unreal-to warrant such concern. The key to a talc is to be found in who tells it; and so I thought I could sec why faulkner may have needed to believe in a black forgiveness, furthermore, which, if one stands aside from what Faulkner wishes us to make of it, can scarcely be distinguished from the bloodiest, most classical Old Testa ment revenge. What Faulkner wishes us to believe, and what he wishes to believe, is at war with what he, fatally, suspects. He suspects that black Nancy may have murdered white Temple's white baby out of pure, exasperated hatred. In lif e, in any case, it would scarcely matter: Nancy's forgiveness, or Nancy's revenge, result, anyway, in infanticide; and it is this tension between hope and terror, this panic-s tricken inability to read the meaning of the event, which condemns the play to an insupportable turgidity. I could sec why Faulkner needed Nancy: but why did Camus need Faulkner? On what ground did they meet, the mind of the great, aging, Missis sippi novelist, and the mind of the young writer from Oran? Neither of them could accurately , or usefully, be described as racists, in spite of Faulkner's declared intention of shooting Negroes in the streets if he found this necessary for the sal vation of the state of Mississippi. This statement had to be read as an excess of patriotism, unli kely, in Faulkner's case, to lead to any further action. The mischief of the remark lay in the tact that it certainly encouraged others to such action. And faulkner's portraits of Negroes, which lack a system of nu ances that, perhaps, only a black writer can sec in black lif e for faulkner could sec Negroes only as they related to him, not as they related to each other-arc nevertheless made vivid TAKE ME TO THE WATER by the torment of their creator.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The woman who now enters the picture has already been abandoned; and, in quite another sense, once she sees the white boy, is anxious to be abandoned. She has the tools which allow the two men to destroy the manacles and break the chain which has bound them together for so long. The logic of actuality would now strongly indicate, given their situation, and what we have seen of their relationship, that they separate. For one thing, each fugitive is safer without the other, and, for another, the woman clearly wishes to be alone with the white boy. She feeds them both, first asking CHAPTER TWO 527 the white boy if he wants her to feed the black one. He says that he does, and they eat. It is unlik ely that Noah Cullen would have sat still for this scene, and even more unlik ely that he would obligingly fall asleep at the table while the white boy and the woman make love. Of course, what the film is now attempting to say-con sciously-is that the ordeal of the black man and the white man has brought them closer together tha n they ever imag ined they could be. The fact, and the effect, of this particular ordeal is being offered as a metaphor for the ordeal of black-white relations in America, an ordeal, the film is saying, which has brought us closer together than we know. But the only level on which this can be said to be true is that level of human experience- that depth-of which Americans are most terrified. The complex of conflicting terrors which the black white connection engenders is suggested by the turgidity of the action which ends this film. For, when the morning comes, the white boy has elected to throw in his lot with the woman, which means that Noah, after all, is to brave the swamps, and ride the rails, alo ne. Noah accepts this, with a briefly mocking bitterness, and he goes. The white boy and the woman begin preparing for their journey. The white boy is worried about his black buddy; though it is difficult to guess at what point, precisely, he be gins to think of Noah as his buddy; and wonders, aloud, if he'll be all right. Whereupon, the woman tells him that she has deliberately given Noah instructions which will lead him to his death: that he will never get out of the swamps alive . It is absolutely impossible to locate the woman's motive for conveying this information. Once Noah has walked out of her door, he is long gone, simply, and can pose n-o threat. It can not conceivably matter to her whether he lives, or dies: he has left their lives, in any case, never to return. If she, for whatever reason, has found a means to make certain that he dies, it is impossible to believe that she would risk telling her newfound lover this.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  But real questions, especially from the young, arc very moving and I will always remember the faces of some of those chil dren. Though the questions facing them were difficult, they appeared, for the most part, to like the challenge. It is true that the white students seemed to look on the black students with some apprehension and some bewilderment, and they also revealed how deeply corrupted they were by the doctrine of white supremacy in many unconscious ways. But the black students, though they were capable of an elaborate, deliberate, and overpowering condescension, seemed, for the most part, 4-66 NO NAME IN THE STREET to have their tongue in their cheek and exhibited very little malice or venom-toward the students: they felt toward their white elders a passionate contempt. What seemed most to distress the white students-distress may be too strong a word; what rendered them thoughtful and uneasy-was the unpromising nature of their options. It was not that they had compared their options with those of the black student and been upset by the obvious, worldly in justice. On the contrary, they seemed to feel, some dimly and some desperately, that the roles which they, as whites, were expected to play were not very meaningful, and perhaps therefore-not very honorable. I remember one boy who was already set to become an executive at one of the major air lines-for him, he joked, bleakly, the sky would be the limit. But he wondered if he could "hold on" to himself, if he could retain the respect of some of the people who respected him now. What he meant was that he hoped not to be pro grammed out of all meaningful human existence, and, clearly, he feared the worst. He, like many students, was being fc:>rced to choose between treason and irrelevance. Their moral ob ligations to the darker brother, if they were real, and if they were really to be acted on, placed them in conflict with all that they had loved and all that had given them an identity, rendered their present uncertain and their future still more so, and even jeopardized their means of staying alive. They were tar fr om judging or repudiating the American state as oppres sive or immoral-they were merely profoundly uneasy. They were aware that the blacks looked on the white commitment very skeptically indeed, and they made it clear that they did not depend on the whites. They could not depend on the whites until the whites had a clearer sense of what they had let themselves in tor. And what the white students had not expected to let themselves in fi>r, when boarding the Freedom Train, was the realization that the black situation in America was but one aspect of the fr a udulent nature of American life.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or thought one knew; to what one possessed or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free-he has set himself free-for higher dreams, for greater privileges. All men have gone through this, go through it, each according to his degree, throughout their lives. It is one of the irreducible facts of life. And remembering this, especially since I am a Negro, affords me almost my only means of understanding what is happening in the minds and hearts of white Southerners today. For the arguments with which the bulk of relatively artic ulate white Southerners of good will have met the necessity of desegregation have no value whatever as arguments, being almost entirely and helplessly dishonest, when not, indeed, insane. After more than two hundred years in slavery and ninety years of quasi-freedom, it is hard to think very highly of William Faulkner's advice to "go slow." "They don't mean go slow," Thurgood Marshall is reported to have said, "they mean don't go." Nor is the squire of Oxford very persuasive when he suggests that white Southerners, left to their own devices, will realize that their own social structure looks silly to the rest of the world and correct it of their own accord. It has looked silly, to use Faulkner's rather strange adjective, for a long time; so far from trying to correct it, Southerners, who seem to be characterized by a species of defiance most perverse when it is most despairing, have clung to it, at incalculable cost to themselves, as the only conceivable and as an abso lut ely sacrosanct way of life. They have never seriously con ceded that their social structure was mad. They have insisted, on the contrary, that everyone who criticized it was mad. Faulkner goes further. He concedes the madness and moral 209 210 NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME wrongness of the South but at the same time he raises it to the level of a mystique which makes it somehow unjust to discuss Southern society in the same terms in which one \H>Uid discuss any other society. "Our position is wrong and untenable," says Faulkner, "but it is not wise to keep an emo tional people otT balance." This, if it means anything, can only mean that this "emotional people" have been swept "off bal ance" by the pressure of recent events, that is, the Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  He squirmed & twitched as if a thousand eyes were on him, & then composed himself into a kind of harlequin melancholy, holding out his long ivory hands & admiring his polished nails. His gaze wd wander off & fix on some working-boy or freak until an appalling rasping cough, which seemed too vehement to come from within so frail & flowerlike a body, convulsed him, doubling him up into a hacking, flailing caricature. After these attacks he sat back exhausted & quelled the tears in the corners of his eyes with the back of his trembling hands. Otto took notice of this & said in his know-all familiar way: ‘Old Firbank seems to be in a bad condition.’ I asked him more, & he told me that the man was a writer. ‘He writes the most wonderful novels,’ said Otto, ‘all about clergymen, & strange old ladies, &—& darkies: you really ought to read him.’ Sandy was standing up. ‘Let’s go & join him,’ he said. I demurred, but it was no use. Poor Firbank looked quite alarmed as this boisterous trio of young men converged on him. But I saw there was something pathetically like relief in his reply to Otto’s greeting, as if, when we gathered about him, the world cd see at last that he had friends. There was a similar contradiction in his reaction when Otto, fixing him with a manly & companionable smile, began to recite a poem—some nonsense about a negress ‘frousting in the sun, thinking of all the little things that she had left undone’ & a good deal of hey-nonny to follow. Firbank seemed to shudder & smile at once (I learnt subsequently that he was the author of this doggerel) & when it was finished said in a kind of airy gasp: ‘How wonderful it must be not to wear a tie!’ He had a curious & characteristic action of sliding his hands down his legs (which were twisted round each other more often than is customarily possible) until he was gripping his ankles & his head had virtually disappeared beneath the table. When he straightened up his breath came more raspingly than ever—or he wd cough again, & burst into a suppressed purple under the powdered finish of his flat, high cheekbones. Physically I found him terrible to be with, & conversation too was well nigh impossible; but there was something fascinating about his exquisite self-preservation & the reckless drinking & coughing which threatened to tear the whole thing apart. As if he knew what I was thinking he said, with a hint of pride, ‘I’m going to die, you know, quite soon.’ This didn’t seem at all unlikely, but when I none the less havered, he insisted that his ‘Egyptian fortune-teller’ had confirmed it.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  On the contrary, A gloss on Rom. 1:29,30, “Tale-bearers, backbiters [Douay: ‘whisperers, detractors’]” says: “Tale-bearers sow discord among friends; backbiters deny or disparage others’ good points.” I answer that, The tale-bearer and the backbiter agree in matter, and also in form or mode of speaking, since they both speak evil secretly of their neighbor: and for this reason these terms are sometimes used one for the other. Hence a gloss on Ecclus. 5:16, “Be not called a tale-bearer [Douay: ‘whisperer’]” says: “i.e. a backbiter.” They differ however in end, because the backbiter intends to blacken his neighbor’s good name, wherefore he brings forward those evils especially about his neighbor which are likely to defame him, or at least to depreciate his good name: whereas a tale-bearer intends to sever friendship, as appears from the gloss quoted above and from the saying of Prov. 26:20, “Where the tale-bearer is taken away, contentions shall cease.” Hence it is that a tale-bearer speaks such ill about his neighbors as may stir his hearer’s mind against them, according to Ecclus. 28:11, “A sinful man will trouble his friends, and bring in debate in the midst of them that are at peace.” Reply to Objection 1: A tale-bearer is called a backbiter in so far as he speaks ill of another; yet he differs from a backbiter since he intends not to speak ill as such, but to say anything that may stir one man against another, though it be good simply, and yet has a semblance of evil through being unpleasant to the hearer. Reply to Objection 2: An informer differs from a tale-bearer and a backbiter, for an informer is one who charges others publicly with crimes, either by accusing or by railing them, which does not apply to a backbiter or tale-bearer. Reply to Objection 3: A double-tongued person is properly speaking a tale-bearer. For since friendship is between two, the tale-bearer strives to sever friendship on both sides. Hence he employs a double tongue towards two persons, by speaking ill of one to the other: wherefore it is written (Ecclus. 28:15): “The tale-bearer [Douay: ‘whisperer’] and the double-tongued is accursed,” and then it is added, “for he hath troubled many that were peace.” Whether backbiting is a graver sin than tale-bearing?Objection 1: It would seem that backbiting is a graver sin than tale-bearing. For sins of word consist in speaking evil. Now a backbiter speaks of his neighbor things that are evil simply, for such things lead to the loss or depreciation of his good name: whereas a tale-bearer is only intent on saying what is apparently evil, because to wit they are unpleasant to the hearer. Therefore backbiting is a graver sin than tale-bearing.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Whether treachery, fraud, falsehood, perjury, restlessness, violence, and insensibility to mercy are daughters of covetousness?Objection 1: It seems that the daughters of covetousness are not as commonly stated, namely, “treachery, fraud, falsehood, perjury, restlessness, violence, and insensibility to mercy.” For covetousness is opposed to liberality, as stated above [3254](A[3]). Now treachery, fraud, and falsehood are opposed to prudence, perjury to religion, restlessness to hope, or to charity which rests in the beloved object, violence to justice, insensibility to mercy. Therefore these vices have no connection with covetousness. Objection 2: Further, treachery, fraud and falsehood seem to pertain to the same thing, namely, the deceiving of one’s neighbor. Therefore they should not be reckoned as different daughters of covetousness. Objection 3: Further, Isidore (Comment. in Deut.) enumerates nine daughters of covetousness; which are “lying, fraud, theft, perjury, greed of filthy lucre, false witnessing, violence, inhumanity, rapacity.” Therefore the former reckoning of daughters is insufficient. Objection 4: Further, the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 1) mentions many kinds of vices as belonging to covetousness which he calls illiberality, for he speaks of those who are “sparing, tight-fisted, skinflints [*{kyminopristes}], misers [*{kimbikes}], who do illiberal deeds,” and of those who “batten on whoredom, usurers, gamblers, despoilers of the dead, and robbers.” Therefore it seems that the aforesaid enumeration is insufficient. Objection 5: Further, tyrants use much violence against their subjects. But the Philosopher says (Ethic. iv, 1) that “tyrants who destroy cities and despoil sacred places are not to be called illiberal,” i.e. covetous. Therefore violence should not be reckoned a daughter of covetousness. On the contrary, Gregory (Moral. xxxi) assigns to covetousness the daughters mentioned above. I answer that, The daughters of covetousness are the vices which arise therefrom, especially in respect of the desire of an end. Now since covetousness is excessive love of possessing riches, it exceeds in two things. For in the first place it exceeds in retaining, and in this respect covetousness gives rise to “insensibility to mercy,” because, to wit, a man’s heart is not softened by mercy to assist the needy with his riches [*See[3255] Q[30], A[1]]. In the second place it belongs to covetousness to exceed in receiving, and in this respect covetousness may be considered in two ways. First as in the thought [affectu]. In this way it gives rise to “restlessness,” by hindering man with excessive anxiety and care, for “a covetous man shall not be satisfied with money” (Eccles. 5:9). Secondly, it may be considered in the execution [effectu]. In this way the covetous man, in acquiring other people’s goods, sometimes employs force, which pertains to “violence,” sometimes deceit, and then if he has recourse to words, it is “falsehood,” if it be mere words, “perjury” if he confirm his statement by oath; if he has recourse to deeds, and the deceit affects things, we have “fraud”; if persons, then we have “treachery,” as in the case of Judas, who betrayed Christ through covetousness.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  REMIGIUS. The manner of Scripture is to give names from the imitation of deeds, according to that of Ezekiel, Thy father was an Amorite; (Ezek. 16:3.) so these from following vipers are called generation of vipers. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. As a skilful physician from the colour of the skin infers the sick man’s disease, so John understood the evil thoughts of the Pharisees who came to him. They thought perhaps, We go, and confess our sins; he imposes no burden on us, we will be baptized, and get indulgence for sin. Fools! if ye have eaten of impurity, must ye not needs take physic? So after confession and baptism, a man needs much diligence to heal the wound of sin; therefore he says, Generation of vipers. It is the nature of the viper as soon as it has bit a man to fly to the water, which, if it cannot find, it straightway dies; so this progeny of vipers, after having committed deadly sin, ran to baptism, that, like vipers, they might escape death by means of water. Moreover it is the nature of vipers to burst the insides of their mothers, and so to be born. The Jews then are therefore called progeny of vipers, because by continual persecution of the prophets they had corrupted their mother the Synagogue. Also vipers have a beautiful and speckled outside, but are filled with poison within. So these men’s countenances wore a holy appearance. REMIGIUS. When then he asks, who will shew you to flee from the wrath to come,—‘except God’ must be understood. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. Or who hath shewed you? Was it Esaias? Surely no; had he taught you, you would not put your trust in water only, but also in good works; he thus speaks, Wash you, and be clean; put your wickedness away from your souls, learn to do well. (Is. 1:16.) Was it then David? who says, Thou shall wash me, and I shall he whiter than snow; (Ps. 51:7.) surely not, for he adds immediately, The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit. If then ye had been the disciples of David, ye would have come to baptism with mournings. REMIGIUS. But if we read, shall shew, in the future, this is the meaning, ‘What teacher, what preacher, shall be able to give you such counsel, as that ye may escape the wrath of everlasting damnation?’ AUGUSTINE. (De Civ. Dei, ix. 5.) God is described in Scripture, from some likeness of effects, not from being subject to such weakness, as being angry, and yet is He never moved by any passion. The word ‘wrath’ is applied to the effects of his vengeance, not that God suffers any disturbing affection. GLOSS. If then ye would escape this wrath, Bring forth fruits meet for repentance.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The favorite text of my father, among the most earnest of minis ters, was not "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," but "How can I sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" This same identification, which Negroes, since slavery, have accepted with their mothers' milk, serves, in contemporary actuality, to implement an involved and specific bitterness. Jews in Harlem are small tradesmen, rent collectors, real estate agents, and pawnbrokers; they operate in accordance with the American business tradition of exploiting Negroes, and they are therefore identified with oppression and are hated for it. I remember meeting no Negro in the years of my growing up, in my family or out of it, who would really ever trust a Jew, and few who did not, indeed, exhibit for them the black est contempt. On the other hand, this did not prevent their working for Jews, being utterly civil and pleasant to them, and, in most cases, contriving to delude their employers into believing that, far fr om harboring any dislike for Jews, they would rather work for a Jew than for anyone else. It is part of the price the Negro pays for his position in this society that, as Richard Wright points out, he is almost always acting. A Negro learns to gauge precisely what reaction the alien per son facing him desires, and he produces it with disarming art lessness. The fr iends I had, growing up and going to work, grew more bitter every day; and, conversely, they learned to hide this bitterness and to fit into the pattern Gentile and Jew alike had fixed f( >r them. The tension between Negroes and Jews contains an element not characteristic of Negro-Gentile tension, an element which accounts in some measure for the Negro's tendency to casti gate the Jew verbally more often than the Gentile, and which might lead one to the conclusion that, of all white people on the face of the earth, it is the Jew whom the Negro hates most. When the Negro hates the Jew as a jew he does so partly because the nation does and in much the same painful THE HARLEM GHETTO 5 1 fashion that he hates himself. It is an aspect of his humiliation whittled down to a manageable size and then transferred; it is the best form the Negro has for tabulating vocally his long record of grievances against his native land. At the same time, there is a subterranean assumption that the Jew should "know better," that he has suffered enough himself to know what suffering means.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Fox was then resolving the Cuban-American tension by means of a movie called Chef. This enterprise gave us Omar Sharif, as Chc Guevara, and Jack Palance, as Fidel Castro: the resulting vaudeville team is not required to sing, or dance, nor is it permitted, using the words very loosely, to act. The United Fruit Company is not mentioned. John Foster Dulles is not mentioned, either, though he was the lawyer for said company, nor is his brother, Allen, who was the head of the CIA. In the person ofChc, we arc confronted with a doomed, romantic clown. His attempts to awaken the peasants merely disturb them, and their goats: this observation, which is in exorably and inevitably true on one level, is absolutely false on the level at which the film uses it. In the person of Castro, we arc confronted with a cigar-smoking, brandy-drinking maniac: a "spic," as clearly unsuited for political responsibility as the nigger congressmen of The Birth of a Nation. 55 0 CHAPTER THREE 55 1 Since both the film for which I had been hired, and Che! were controversial, courageous, revolutionary films, being packaged for the consumer society, it was hoped that our film would beat Che! to the box-office. This was not among my concerns. I had a fairly accurate idea of what Hollywood was about to do with Che!. (This is not black, bitter paranoia, but cold, professional observation: you can make a fairly accurate guess as to the direction a film is likely to take by observing who is cast in it, and who has been assigned to direct it.) The intention of Che! was to make both the man, and his Bolivian adventure, irrelevant and ridiculous; and to do this, further more, with such a syrup of sympathy that any incipient Che would think twice before leaving Mama, and the ever-ready fr iend at the bank. Che, in the film, is a kind of Lawrence of Arabia, trapped on the losing side, and unable, even, to un derstand the natives he has, mistakenly, braved the jungles to arouse. I had no intention of so betraying Malcolm, or his natives. Yet, my producer had been advised, in an inter-office memo which I, quite unscrupulously, intercepted, that the writer (me) should be advised that the tragedy of Malcolm's life was that he had been mistreated, early, by some whites, and betrayed (later) by many blacks: emphasis in the original. The writer was also to avoid suggesting that Malcolm's trip to Mecca could have had any political implications, or reper cussions. Well.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  But I thought about him a great deal. The grapevine keeps all of us advised of the others' movements, so I knew when Norman left Connecticut fo r New York, heard that he had 2 7 6 NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME been present at this or that party and what he had said: usually something rude, often something penetrating, sometimes something so hilariously silly that it was difficult to believe he had been serious. (This was my reaction when I first heard his fa mous running-for-President remark. I dismissed it. I was wrong.) Or he had been seen in this or that Village spot, in which unfailingly there would be someone-out of spite, idle ness, envy, exasperation, out of the bottomless, eerie, aimless hostility which characterizes almost every bar in New York, to speak only of bars-to put him down. I heard of a couple of fist-fights, and, of course, I was always encountering people who hated his guts. These people always mildly surprised me, and so did the news of his fights: it was hard fo r me to imagine that anyone could really dislike Norman, anyone, that is, who had encountered him personally. I knew of one fight he had had, forced on him, apparently, by a blow-hard Village type whom I considered rather pathetic. I didn't blame Norman fo r this fight, but I couldn't help wondering why he bothered to rise to such a shapeless challenge. It seemed simpler, as I was always telling myself, just to stay out of Village bars. And people talked about Norman with a kind of avid glee, which I fo und very ugly. Pleasure made their saliva flow, they sprayed and all but drooled, and their eyes shone with that blood-lust which is the only real tribute the mediocre are ca pable of bringing to the extraordinary. Many of the people who claimed to be seeing Norman all the time impressed me as being, to tell the truth, pitifully fa r beneath him. But this is also true, alas, of much of my own entourage. The people who arc in one's life or merely continually in one's presence rc,·eal a great deal about one's needs and terrors. Also, one's hopes. I was not, however, on the scene. I was on the road-not quite, I trust, in the sense that Kerouac's boys are; but I pre sented, certainly, a moving target. And I was reading Norman Mailer. Before I had met him, I had only read The Naked and The Dead, The White Negro, and Barbary Shore-1 think this is right, though it may be that I only read The White Negro later and confuse my reading of that piece with some of my discussions with Norman.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  He a devil, just like Malcolm says he is. I told my teacher I wa sn't going to salute the flag no more don't you think I was right? You mean, if we have a dance after the basketball game, all the brothers is going to have to dance with the same lfirl all night? What about the white guys? Oh, they can dance with yotn' girl. Laughter, embarrassment, bewildered ill-f eeling. Mr. B., What do you think of intermar riage? Real questions can be absurdly phrased, and probably can be answered only by the questioner, and, at that, only in time. But real questions, especially from the young, arc very moving and I will always remember the faces of some of those chil dren. Though the questions facing them were difficult, they appeared, for the most part, to like the challenge. It is true that the white students seemed to look on the black stude nts with some apprehension and some bewilderment, and they also revealed how deeply corrupted they were by the doctrine of white supremacy in many unconscious ways. But the black students, though they were capable of an elaborate, deliberate, and overpowering condescension, seemed, for the most part, 4-66 NO NAM E IN THE STREET to have their tongue in their cheek and exhibited very little malice or venom-toward the students: they felt toward their white elders a passionate contempt. What seemed most to distress the white students-distress may be too strong a word; what rendered them thoughtful and uneasy-was the unpromising nature of their options. It was not that they had compared their options with those of the black student and been upset by the obvious, worldly in justice. On the contrary, they seemed to feel, some dimly and some desperately, that the roles which they, as whites, were expected to play were not very meaningful, and perhaps therefore-not very honorable. I remember one boy who was already set to become an executive at one of the major air lines -for him, he joked, ble akly, the sky would be the limit. But he wondered if he could "hold on" to himself, if he could retain the respect of some of the people who respected him now. What he meant was that he hoped not to be pro grammed out of all meaningful human existence, and, clearly, he feared the worst. He, like many students, was being fc:>rced to choose between treason and irrelevance.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  And this is not quite so understandable, except in the gaudy light of the film's intention. The film presents us, after all, with the spectacle of a noble people, brought to such a pass that even their loyal sla ves arc subverted. for the sake of the dignity of this temporarily defeated people, and out of a vivid and loving concern for their betrayed and endangered slaves, the violated social order must, at all costs, be re-established . And it is re established by the vision and heroism of the noblest among these noble. The disaster which they must overcome (and, in future, avert) has been brought about, not through any fault of their own, and not because of any defection among their slaves, but by the weak and misguided among them who have given the mulattoes ideas above their station. But how did so ungodly a creature as the mulatto enter this Eden, and where did he come from? The film cannot concern itself with this inconvenient and impertinent question, any more than can Governor Wallace, or the bulk of his confreres, North or South. We need not pursue it, except to observe that almost all mulattoes, and especially at that time, were produced by white men, and rarely indeed by an act of love. The mildest possible word is coercion: which is why white men invented the crime of rape, with the specific intention (and effect) of castrating and hang ing the nigger. Neither did black men fasten on the word, mulatto, to describe the issue of their own loins. But white men did-as follows: The root of the word, mulatto, is Spanish, according to Webster, from mulo, a mule. The word refers to: ( 1) a person, CHAP TER TWO 51 5 one of whose parents is Negro and the other Caucasian, or white; and (2) popularly, any person with mixed Negro and Caucasian ancestry. A mule is defined as (1) the offspring of a donkey and a horse, especially the offspring of a jackass and a mare- mules are ttsttally sterile.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Here the Jew is caught in the American cross fire. The Negro, fa cing a Jew, hates, at bottom, not his Jew ishness but the color of his skin. It is not the Jewish tradition by which he has been betrayed but the tradition of his nati,·e land. But just as a society must ha,·e a scapegoat, so hatred must have a symbol. Georgia has the Negro and Harlem has the Jew. Jo urney to Atlanta T HE PROGRESSIVE PARTY has not, so far as I can gather, made any very great impression in Harlem, and this is not so much despite as because of its campaign promises, promises rather too extravagant to be believed. It is considered a rather cheerful axiom that all Americans distrust politicians. (No one takes the further and less cheerful step of considering just what etfect this mutual contempt has on either the public or the politicians, who have, indeed, very little to do with one an other.) Of all Americans, Negroes distrust politicians most, or, more accurately, they have been best trained to expect noth ing fr om them; more than other Americans, they are always aware of the enormous gap between election promises and their daily lives. It is true that the promises excite them, but this is not because they are taken as proof of good intentions. They arc the proof of something more concrete than inten tions: that the Negro situation is not static, that changes have occurred, and are occurring and will occur-this, in spite of the daily, dead-end monotony. It is this daily, dead-end mo notony, though, as well as the wise desire not to be betrayed by too much hoping, which causes them to look on politicians with such an extraordinarily disenchanted eye. This fatalistic indifference is something that drives the op timistic American li beral quite mad; he is prone, in his more exasperated moments, to refer to Negroes as political children, an appellation not entirely just. Negro liberals, being con sulted, assure us that this is something that will disappear with "education," a vast, all - purpose term, conjuring up visions of sunlit housing projects, stacks of copybooks and a race of well soaped, dark-skinned people who never slur their R's. Actu ally, this is not so much political irresponsibility as the product of experience, experience which no amount of education can quite efface. It is, as much as anything else, the reason the Negro vote is so easily bought and sold, the reason for that exclamation heard so frequently on Sugar Hill: "Our people never get anywhere." "Our people" have functioned in this country for nearly a 54- JOURNEY TO ATLANTA 55 century as political weapons, the trump card up the enemies' sleeve; anything promised Negroes at election time is also a threat levelled at the opposition; in the struggle for mastery the Negro is the pawn.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  It is the Negro, of course, who is presumed to have become equal-an achievement that not only proves the comforting fact that perseverance has no color but also overwhelmingly corroborates the white man's sense of his own value. Alas, this value can scarcely be cor roborated in any other way; there is certainly little enough in the white man's public or private life that one should desire DOWN AT THE CROSS 34 1 to imitate. White men, at the bottom of their hearts, know this. Therefore, a vast amount of the energy that goes into what we call the Negro problem is produced by the white man's profound desire not to be judged by those who are not white, not to be seen as he is, and at the same time a vast amount of the white anguish is rooted in the white man's equally profound need to be seen as he is, to be released from the tyranny of his mirror. All of us know, whether or not we are able to admit it, that mirrors can only lie, that death by drowning is all that awaits one there. It is for this reason that love is so desperately sought and so cunningly avoided. Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace-not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth. And I submit, then, that the racial tensions that menace Americans today have little to do with real antipa thy-on the contrary, indeed-and are involved only sym bolically with color. These tensions are rooted in the very same depths as those from which love springs, or murder. The white man's unadmitted-and apparently, to him, unspeak able-private fears and longings are projected onto the Negro. The only way he can be released from the Negro's tyrannical power over him is to consent, in effect, to become black him self, to become a part of that suffering and dancing country that he now watches wistfully from the heights of his lonely power and, armed with spiritual traveller's checks, visits sur reptitiously after dark. How can one respect, let alone adopt, the values of a people who do not, on any level whatever, live the way they say they do, or the way they say they should? I cannot accept the proposition that the four-hundred-year tra vail of the American Negro should result merely in his attain ment of the present level of the American civilization. I am fa r from convinced that being released fr om the African witch doctor was worthwhile if I am now-in order to support the moral contradictions and the spiritual aridity of my life-ex pected to become dependent on the American psychiatrist. It is a bargain I refuse.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I looked at him in a contemptuous way, I fear. There we were, side by side, gazing past each other, our elbows resting on the rail between us. ‘Enough of this,’ I said & clasped his hand in mine, our elbows wobbling on the rail as if we were Indian arm-wrestlers. Then suddenly he seemed to panic, & was hugging me boisterously. We clung to each other for some while, leaning over the little fence, which was less than comfortable. He said many extravagant things about me, most of which, on reflection, were apt enough, & which people don’t say to me sufficiently often … How amply misnamed is the loving-chair! I suggested we have a walk outside—partly because there was no refuge if anyone came back to look for us—so off we went, & he got going once again on how he thought Tim didn’t trust him, was it because he knew about his ‘real nature’, & so forth. I told him about Tim at school & what he had been like then, whatever censorious woman-chasing attitudes he took on now. ‘I must have buggered Tim Carswell at least 500 times,’ I said, calling up a random figure which can’t have been far from the truth. Poor old Chancey was fairly shattered at this. ‘I’ve missed out on my youth,’ he said, rather melodramatically. When we got into a particularly thick knot of yews, I caught his arm & we set to it. I knew he had to have me, which was very painful (after so long without anything of this kind) though over quickly. I was quite unaroused throughout, had had quite enough of it all by the time he was waxing melancholy and emotional, kind of victorious & guilt-laden at the same time. It was only afterwards—only now—I saw the beauty of it. We eventually found the others back where we’d started & ready to give us up & go home without us, which wd have been an intolerable price to pay for so little pleasure. Loud were the exclamations & I suppose widespread the obvious conjecture. Only Sandy actually said, as I climbed into the car where he had been resting all this while, ‘Poodlefaking with Chancey Brough, eh? You wicked little slut.’ Later, on the journey, though with Tim this time on the other side of me, Chancey, feeling all rejected, having chosen to ride in the front, Sandy said, his eyes closed & I had thought asleep, ‘So tell me about our bourgeois Priapus, Charlie,’ quite loudly, so that I had to tickle him & fight all the way back to College …

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, As stated above ([3142]FS, Q[18], A[2]) an act is evil generically when it bears on undue matter. Now a spiritual thing is undue matter for buying and selling for three reasons. First, because a spiritual thing cannot be appraised at any earthly price, even as it is said concerning wisdom (Prov. 3:15), “she is more precious than all riches, and all things that are desired, are not to be compared with her”: and for this reason Peter, in condemning the wickedness of Simon in its very source, said (Acts 8:20): “Keep thy money to thyself to perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.” Secondly, because a thing cannot be due matter for sale if the vendor is not the owner thereof, as appears from the authority quoted (OBJ[1]). Now ecclesiastical superiors are not owners, but dispensers of spiritual things, according to 1 Cor. 4:1, “Let a man so account of us as of the ministers of Christ, and the dispensers of the ministers of God.” Thirdly, because sale is opposed to the source of spiritual things, since they flow from the gratuitous will of God. Wherefore Our Lord said (Mat. 10:8): “Freely have you received, freely give.” Therefore by buying or selling a spiritual thing, a man treats God and divine things with irreverence, and consequently commits a sin of irreligion. Reply to Objection 1: Just as religion consists in a kind of protestation of faith, without, sometimes, faith being in one’s heart, so too the vices opposed to religion include a certain protestation of unbelief without, sometimes, unbelief being in the mind. Accordingly simony is said to be a “heresy,” as regards the outward protestation, since by selling a gift of the Holy Ghost a man declares, in a way, that he is the owner of a spiritual gift; and this is heretical. It must, however, be observed that Simon Magus, besides wishing the apostles to sell him a grace of the Holy Ghost for money, said that the world was not created by God, but by some heavenly power, as Isidore states (Etym. viii, 5): and so for this reason simoniacs are reckoned with other heretics, as appears from Augustine’s book on heretics. Reply to Objection 2: As stated above ([3143]Q[58], A[4]), justice, with all its parts, and consequently all the opposite vices, is in the will as its subject. Hence simony is fittingly defined from its relation to the will. This act is furthermore described as “express,” in order to signify that it proceeds from choice, which takes the principal part in virtue and vice. Nor does everyone sin against the Holy Ghost that sins from choice, but only he who chooses sin through contempt of those things whereby man is wont to be withdrawn from sin, as stated above ([3144]Q[14], A[1]).

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 1: Laughing to scorn and derision agree as to the end but differ in mode, because derision is done with the “mouth,” i.e. by words and laughter, while laughing to scorn is done by wrinkling the nose, as a gloss says on Ps. 2:4, “He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them”: and such a distinction does not differentiate the species. Yet they both differ from reviling, as being shamed differs from being dishonored: for to be ashamed is “to fear dishonor,” as Damascene states (De Fide Orth. ii, 15). Reply to Objection 2: For doing a virtuous deed a man deserves both respect and a good name in the eyes of others, and in his own eyes the glory of a good conscience, according to 2 Cor. 1:12, “Our glory is this, the testimony of our conscience.” Hence, on the other hand, for doing a reprehensible, i.e. a vicious action, a man forfeits his honor and good name in the eyes of others—and for this purpose the reviler and the backbiter speak of another person—while in his own eyes, he loses the glory of his conscience through being confused and ashamed at reprehensible deeds being imputed to him—and for this purpose the derider speaks ill of him. It is accordingly evident that derision agrees with the foregoing vices as to the matter but differs as to the end. Reply to Objection 3: A secure and calm conscience is a great good, according to Prov. 15:15, “A secure mind is like a continual feast.” Wherefore he that disturbs another’s conscience by confounding him inflicts a special injury on him: hence derision is a special kind of sin. Whether derision can be a mortal sin?Objection 1: It would seem that derision cannot be a mortal sin. Every mortal sin is contrary to charity. But derision does not seem contrary to charity, for sometimes it takes place in jest among friends, wherefore it is known as “making fun.” Therefore derision cannot be a mortal sin. Objection 2: Further, the greatest derision would appear to be that which is done as an injury to God. But derision is not always a mortal sin when it tends to the injury of God: else it would be a mortal sin to relapse into a venial sin of which one has repented. For Isidore says (De Sum. Bon. ii, 16) that “he who continues to do what he has repented of, is a derider and not a penitent.” It would likewise follow that all hypocrisy is a mortal sin, because, according to Gregory (Moral. xxxi, 15) “the ostrich signifies the hypocrite, who derides the horse, i.e. the just man, and his rider, i.e. God.” Therefore derision is not a mortal sin.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Once they had decided that he was savage, there was nothing to honor, recognize or describe. But the savages describe the Europeans, who were not yet, when they landed in the New(!) World, White, as the people from heaven. Neither did the savages in Africa have any way of foreseeing the anguished diaspora to which they were about to be condemned. Even the chiefs who sold Africans into slav ery could not have had any idea that this slavery was meant to endure forever, or for at least a thousand years. Nothing in the savage experience could have prepared them for such an idea, any more than they could conceive of the land as some thing to be bought and sold. (As I cannot believe that people are actually buying and selling air space above the towers of Manhattan .) Nevertheless, all of this happened, and is happening. Out of this incredible brutality, we get the myth of the happy darky and Gone With the Wind. And the North Americans appear to believe these legends, which they have created and which absolutely nothing in reality corroborates, until today. And when these legends are attacked, as is happening now-all over a globe which has never been and never will be White- 812 OTH ER ESS AYS my countrymen become childishly vindictive and unutterably dangerous. The unadmitted panic of which I spoke above is created by the terror that the Savage can, now, describe the Civilized: the only way to prevent this is to obliterate humanity. This panic proves that neither a person nor a people can do any thing without knowing what they are doing. Neither can any one avoid paying for the choices he or she has made. It is savagely, if one may say so, ironical that the only proof the world-m ankind-has ever had of White supremacy is in the Black face and voice: that face never scrutinized, that voice never heard. The eyes in that face prove the unforgivable and unimaginable horror of being a captive in the promised land, but also prove that trouble don't last always: and the voice, once filled with a rage and pain that corroborated the reality of the jailer, is addressing another reality, in other tongues. The people who think of themselves as White have the choice of becoming human or irrelevant. Or-as they arc, indeed, already, in all but actual fact: ob solete.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  "D o you really like your mother?" did not cause me to wonder about my mother or myself but about the person asking the question. And perhaps because of such questions, I was not even re motely tempted by the possibilities of psychiatry or psycho analysis. for one thing, there were too many schools-Freud, Horney, Jung, Reich (to suggest merely the tip of that ice berg)- and, for another, it seemed to me that anyone who thought seriously that I had any desire to be "adjusted" to this society had to be ill; too ill, certainly, as time was to prove, to be trusted. I sensed, then-without being able to articulate it-that this dependence on a t(>rmula for safety, t(>r that is what it was, signaled a desperate moral abdication. People went to the shrink in order to find justification f(>r the empty lives they led and the meaningless work they did. Many turned, help lessly, hopefully, to Wilhelm Reich and perished in orgone boxes. * FREAKS AND AM ERIC AN IDE AL OF MAN HOOD 827 I seem to have strayed a long way from our subject, but our subject is social and historical-and continuous. The people who leaped into orgonc boxes in search of the pe rfect orgasm were later to turn to acid. The people so dependent on psychiatric formulas were unable to give their children any sense of right or wrong-indeed, this sense was in themselves so fragile that during the McCarthy era, more than one shrink made a lot of money by convincing his patients, or clients, that their psychic health demanded that they inform on their friends. (Some of these people, after their surrender, at tempted to absolve themselves in the civil rights movement.) What happened to the children, therefore, is not even re motely astonishing. The flower children-who became the Weather Underground, the Symbioncsc Liberation Army, the Manson Family-arc creatures from this howling inner space. I am not certain, therefore, that the present sexual revolu tion is either sexual or a revolution. It strikes me as a reaction to the spiritual famine of American lif e. The present androg ynous "crazc "-to underestimate it-strikes me as an attempt to be honest concerning one's nature, and it is instmctivc, I think, to note that there is virtually no emphasis on overt sexual activity.