Fear

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)

  Tony wanted to fight the extradition proceedings, for he was certain that he would be murdered on the way back home. This fear may strike the ordinary American as preposterous, in spite of what they themselves know concerning the violence which is the heritage and the scourge of their country. I could not, of course, agree with Tony, but I didn't find his terror, which was exceedingly controlled and therefore very moving, in the least preposterous. But I had no remote notion how to go about fighting his extradition. Ironically, the very greatest ob stacle lay in the fact that New York had abolished the death penalty. The plea could be made, then, only on political grounds. I agree with the Black Panther position concerning black prisoners: not one of them has ever had a fair trial, for not one of them has ever been tried by a jury of his peers. White middle-class America is always the jury, and they know 422 NO NAM E IN THE STREE T absolutely nothing about the lives of the people on whom they sit in judgment: and this fact is not altered, on the con trary it is rendered more implacable by the presence of one or two black faces in the jury box. But it would be difficult indeed to convey to a German court the political implications of a black man's arrest: difficult if not impossible to convey, especially to a nation "f riendly" to the United States, to what extent black Americans are po litical prisoners. Muhammad Ali, formerly Cassius Clay, is a vivid example of what can happen to a black man who obeys the American injunction, be true to your faith, but his press has been so misleading that he is also an unwieldy and intim idating example. Muhammad Ali is one of the best of the "bad niggers" and has been publ icly hanged like one, but since I had to avoid the religious issue, which had nothing to do with Tony's case, I could not cite him as an example. Neither was the Maynard case lik ely to interest civil rights organizations, or the NAACP; it was, in fact, simply another example of a black hustler being thrown into jail. The complex of reasons dictating such a fate could scarcely be articulated in a letter to the German court. There was also the enormous and delicate problem of publicity. Though I had no choice in the matter, for I certainly couldn't abandon him, I was terrified that my presence in the case would work strongly to Tony's disadvan tage. I intended to fight the extradition proceedings as hard as I knew how, but I knew how unl ikely it was that we would win.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  One can very quickly cease to attempt this distinction, THE FIRE NEXT TIME and, what is worse, one usually ceases to attempt it without realizing that one has done so. All doormen, fo r example, and all policemen have by now, fo r me, become exactly the same, and my style with them is designed simply to intimidate them before they can intimidate me. No doubt I am guilty of some injustice here, but it is irreducible, since I cannot risk assum ing that the humanity of these people is more real to them than their uniforms. Most Negroes cannot risk assuming that the humanity of white people is more real to them than their color. And this leads, imperceptibly but inevitably, to a state of mind in which, having long ago learned to expect the worst, one finds it very easy to believe the worst. The brutality with which Negroes arc treated in this country simply cannot be overstated, however unwilling white men may be to hear it. In the beginning-and neither can this be overstated-a Negro just cannot believe that white people arc treating him as they do; he docs not know what he has done to merit it. And when he realizes that the treatment accorded him has nothing to do with anything he has done, that the attempt of white people to destroy him-fi:>r that is what it is-is utterly gratuitous, it is not hard fo r him to think of white people as devils. For the horrors of the American Negro's life there has been almost no language. The privacy of his experience, which is only beginning to be recognized in language, and which is denied or ignored in official and popular speech-hence the Negro idiom-lends credibility to any system that pretends to clarity it. And, in fa ct, the truth about the black man, as a historical entity and as a human being, has been hidden from him, deliberately and cruelly; the power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions. So every attempt is made to cut that black man down-not only was made yesterday but is made today.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  I had called my sister, Gloria, from the station, so she knew that I was back in ::\ew York, but she did not know where. Therefore, my family and friends were searching for me in e,·ery Village street and bar and were considering the dubious and desperate extreme of calling the police. But, finall y, I surfaced, fully conscious of how irresponsible I had been, and more than a little shaken by the realization that it NO NAM E IN THE STRE ET had been a kind of retrospective terror which had paralyzed me so long. While in the South I had suppressed my terror well enough, in any case, to function; but when the pressure came oft� a kind of wonder of terror overcame me, making me as useless as a snapped rubber band. This worried me ex ceedingly. I sensed in it a pattern which I was never, in fact, thoroughly to overcome. I will never forget the weary face of a black friend who had been searching for me for days, meet ing me on Sixth Avenue as I was on my repentant way to the subway. He saw me as he turned from Waverly Place onto the avenue at the same time that I saw him. He stood stock-stili as I was forced to walk toward him. A small, unwilling smile tugged at the corners of his lips. Then, I was in front of him and Lonnie said, "W ell , I'm not going to curse you out. You've done it to yourself al ready." And he bought me a drink, and I went uptown to my sister's house, where I was sleeping on the couch in those days. In the church, the preacher says, after an apparently mean ingless anecdote, "I have said all that to say"-this: I doubt that I really knew much about terror before I went South. I do not mean, merely, though I very well might, that visceral reaction produced by the realization that one is facing one's own death. Then, as now, a Northern policeman, black or white, a white co-w orker, or a black one, the colorless walls of precinct basements, the colorless handcuffs , the colorless fi.Jture, arc quite enough to introduce into one's lif e the stun ning realization that that lite can be ended at any moment.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  She wrote to ask my advice regarding her problems with men: “Your book taught me a lot about myself that I never put together before. My parents divorced after 23 years of marriage. My major fear is that if my parents were together that long, and the marriage was fine, how can I possibly see 23 years down the road for myself? So I get scared and don’t want to marry at all, even though I desire marriage more than anything. I also am afraid that any man I love will be gone the next day. Every relationship I have ever been in ended because I was so clingy. I was afraid that the guy would not like me tomorrow. As a result my clinginess made them do just that. They left. I try to control it but it’s really hard because I get so scared. I want to find a great marriage and say to my parents, ‘Hey, look. I did it and you couldn’t.’ Thanks again, Greta Saunders.” Greta is a member of a plucky generation in which men and women have evolved their own values that were not part of their upbringing. They are tackling the life tasks of adulthood with courage despite their many fears. They’re eager to help themselves and each other to succeed where their parents failed. And, as we report in our book, many of them eventually triumph. JUDITH S. WALLERSTEIN SANDRA BLAKESLEE September 2000 Contents Cover Title Page Prologue Preface Introduction PART ONE Parallel Universes: Karen and Gary ONE When a Child Becomes the Caregiver TWO Sunlit Memories THREE Growing Up Is Harder FOUR What If They’d Stayed Together—and What If They Can’t? FIVE When There’s No One to Set an Example SIX Setting an Example PART TWO The Legacy of Divorce: Larry and Carol SEVEN The Wages of Violence EIGHT Our Failure to Intervene NINE Order Out of Chaos TEN Family Ties ELEVEN Undoing the Past PART THREE The Parentless Child: Paula TWELVE Growing Up Lonely THIRTEEN Court-Ordered Visiting, the Child’s View FOURTEEN Sex and Drugs FIFTEEN Evolving Relationships SIXTEEN The Custody Saga Continues PART FOUR The Vulnerable Child: Billy SEVENTEEN The Vulnerable Child EIGHTEEN The Stepfamily NINETEEN Picking Up the Pieces, One by One PART FIVE My Best Case: Lisa TWENTY Is Not Fighting Enough? TWENTY-ONE Children of Divorce TWENTY-TWO Conclusions Appendix: Research Sample Index Acknowledgments About the Author BOOKS BY JUDITH WALLERSTEIN, PH.D. Copyright Notes Preface IN THE FALL OF 1994 I received a phone call that was to entirely revise my understanding of divorce and how it has changed the nature of American society. On the other end of the line was Karen James, one of the children in a longitudinal study on divorce that I began in 1971 and last wrote about in the late 1980s. I remembered her well.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  As both generations mellow, they can turn to one another and discover what they had lost. This finding, which is just now emerging after twenty-five years, bodes well for our divorce culture. It means that forgiveness is possible—and that it’s never too late for parents and children to regain mutual love. That’s the encouraging side of our story. But there is an equally powerful discouraging side. Researchers now say that elderly people with a history of divorce will get less care from their children than people who have never been divorced. They will get even less care from stepchildren. People who have been divorced are much less likely to reside with a child in their old age and less likely to receive care from a child, even if they are disabled, compared with the elderly who have never divorced. When divorced parents get help from their children, it is more often in the form of cash and not personal attention. The trend is true for mothers and fathers, especially for those who remarried. However, widowed parents receive more than twice as much financial help as divorced parents. Who will step in when the Baby Boomers reach old age? In the generation that ushered in our divorce culture, the safety net traditionally offered to aging parents is not likely to be in place. Society may well pick up the tab through higher taxes to pay for Medicare, but that will not be commensurate with the sense of abandonment and loss that long-divorced parents are about to experience. This we surely did not anticipate. THIRTEEN Court-Ordered Visiting, the Child’s View S hortly after her eighth birthday, Paula’s father reentered her life. Like many men after divorce, he eventually used the crisis to pull his life together and was now feeling chipper about himself and recovered from his financial debacle and humiliating betrayal by a trusted friend. Now he genuinely wanted to spend time with his children, to get to know them again, to be given a second chance. How much or how often fathers should visit their children is a matter of endless public debate and friction between advocates for mothers’ rights and fathers’ rights. Many judges, mediators, and mental health professionals who work in divorce believe that the amount of visiting by the father fluctuates with the level of anger between the parents. They assume that the mother’s anger at the father is to blame when the father’s visits lapse or significantly decrease. This may be the case immediately after the breakup but in the years after divorce many other influences affect the frequency or infrequency of visiting. A major study of father visiting in eight states showed hardly any links between the mother’s anger and the father’s visits. 1 Courts don’t generally see these fluctuations because they are focused on the period of the marital breakup.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Until this is done-and it will be accom plished very soon-the total destruction of the white man is being delayed. Elijah's mission is to return "the so-called DOWN AT THE CROSS 3 2 5 Negro" to Islam, to separate the chosen of Allah from this doomed nation. Furthermore, the white man knows his his tory, knows himself to be a devil, and knows that his time is running out, and all his technology, psychology, science, and "tricknology" are being expended in the effort to prevent black men from hearing the truth. This truth is that at the very beginning of time there was not one white face to be fo und in all the universe. Black men ruled the earth and the black man was perfect. This is the truth concerning the era that white. men now refer to as prehistoric. They want black men to believe that they, like white men, once lived in caves and swung from trees and ate their meat raw and did not have the power of speech. But this is not true. Black men were never in such a condition. Allah allowed the Devil, through his scientists, to carry on infernal experiments, which resulted, finally, in the creation of the devil known as the white man, and later, even more disastrously, in the creation of the white woman. And it was decreed that these monstrous creatures should rule the earth for a certain number of years-I fo rget how many thousand, but, in any case, their rule now is end ing, and Allah, who had never approved of the creation of the white man in the first place (who knows him, in fact, to be not a man at all but a devil), is anxious to restore the rule of peace that the rise of the white man totally destroyed. There is thus, by definition, no virtue in white people, and since they are another creation entirely and can no more, by breeding, become black than a cat, by breeding, can become a horse, there is no hope fo r them. There is nothing new in this merciless fo rmulation except the explicitness of its symbols and the candor of its hatred. Its emotional tone is as fa miliar to me as my own skin; it is but another way of saying that sinners shall be bound in Hell a thousand years. That sinners have always, fo r American Ne groes, been white is a truth we needn't labor, and every Amer ican Negro, therefore, risks having the gates of paranoia close on him. In a society that is entirely hostile, and, by its nature, seems determined to cut you down-that has cut down so many in the past and cuts down so many every day-it begins to be almost impossible to distinguish a real fr om a fa ncied injury.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  There are some wars, for example (if anyone on the globe is still mad enough to go to war), that the American Negro will not support, however many of his people may be coerced-and there is a limit to the number of people any government can put in prison, and a rigid limit indeed to the practicality of such a course. A bill is coming in that I fear America is not prepared to pay. "The problem of the twen tieth century," wrote W. E. B. Du Bois around sixty years ago, "is the problem of the color line." A fearful and delicate problem, which compromises, when it does not corrupt, all the American efforts to build a better world-here, there, or anywhere. It is for this reason that everything white Americans think they believe in must now be reexamined. What one would not like to see again is the consolidation of peoples on the basis of their color. But as long as we in the West place on color the value that we do, we make it impossible for the great unwashed to consolidate themselves according to any other principle. Color is not a human or a personal reality; it THE FIRE NEXT TIME is a political reality. But this is a distinction so extremely hard to make that the West has not been able to make it yet. And at the center of this dreadful storm, this vast confusion, stand the black people of this nation, who must now share the fate of a nation that has never accepted them, to which they were brought in chains. Well, if this is so, one has no choice but to do all in one's power to change that fate, and at no matter what risk-eviction, imprisonment, torture, death. For the sake of one's children, in order to minimize the bill that they must pay, one must be careful not to take refuge in any de lusion-and the value placed on the color of the skin is always and everywhere and forever a delusion. I know that what I am asking is impossible. But in our time, as in every time, the impossible is the least that one can demand-and one is, after all, emboldened by the spectacle of human history in general, and American Negro history in particular, for it testifies to nothing less than the perpetual achievement of the impossible. When I was very young, and was dealing with my buddies in those wine-and urine-stained hallways, something in me wondered, What will happen to all that beauty? For black peo ple, though I am aware that some of us, black and white, do not know it yet, are very beautiful. And when I sat at Elijah's table and watched the baby, the women, and the men, and we talked about God's-or Allah's-vengeance, I wondered, when that vengeance was achieved, What will happen to all that beauty then?

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  There were, incident ally, according to my brother, five Negro policemen in Atlanta at this time, who, though they were not allowed to arrest whites, would, of course, be willing, indeed, in their position, anxious, to arrest any Negro who seemed to need it. In Harlem, Negro policemen arc feared even more than whites, for they have more to prove and tewcr ways to prove it. The prospect of being arrested in Atlanta made them a little dizzy with terror: what might mean a beating in Harlem might quite possibly mean death here. "And at the same time," David says, "it was funny"; by which he means that the five policemen were faint prophecies of that equality which is the Progressive Party's goal. They did not sec Mrs. Price again; this was their severance fr om the Party, which now refused to pay any expenses; it was only the fact that their rent had been paid in advance which kept them off the streets. Food, however, remained a prob- 02 NOTES OF A NATIVE SON lem . Mr. \Varde brought them a "couple of loaves of bread" and some jam; they sang one engagement. During this week t\ lrs. Price relented enough to get their clothes fr om the clea ners and send Mr. Warde, in custody of a white man who had been at the party, to the bus station for tickets. This man, whose resemblance to the Southern Gentleman of the Pull man is in no way diminished by his allegiance to Mr. Wallace, bought the tickets and threw them on the ground at Mr. Warde's feet, advising him not to show his black face in Geor gia again. The quartet, meanwhile, had gotten together six dollars do ing odd jobs, which was enough, perhaps, for three of them to cat on the road. They split up, three leaving that Friday and the other two staying on about ten days longer, working tor a construction company. Mr. Warde stopped off to visit his family, promising to see The Melodeers in New York, but he had not arrived as this was being written. The Melodeers laugh about their trip now, that good-natured, hearty laughter which is, according to white men, the peculiar heritage of Negroes, Negroes who were born with the fortunate ability to laugh all their troubles away. Somewhat surprisingly, they arc not particularly bitter toward the Progressive Party, though they can scarcely be numbered among its supporters. "They're all the same," David tells me, "ain't none of 'em gonna do you no good; if you gonna be fi:>Oiish enough to bclic,·c what they say, then it serves you good and right. Ain't none of 'em gonna do a thing for me." Notes of a Native Son 0 N THE 29TH OF JULY, in 194 3 , my father died. On the same day, a few hours later, his last child was born.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  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 5 2 7 the white boy if he wants her to feed the black one. He says that he does, and they eat. It is unlikely that Noah Cullen would have sat still for this scene, and even more unlikely 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 than 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, alone. 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. She does not know enough about him.

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

  Reply to Objection 4: As Augustine says (De Civ. Dei i, 21), “not even Samson is to be excused that he crushed himself together with his enemies under the ruins of the house, except the Holy Ghost, Who had wrought many wonders through him, had secretly commanded him to do this.” He assigns the same reason in the case of certain holy women, who at the time of persecution took their own lives, and who are commemorated by the Church. Reply to Objection 5: It belongs to fortitude that a man does not shrink from being slain by another, for the sake of the good of virtue, and that he may avoid sin. But that a man take his own life in order to avoid penal evils has indeed an appearance of fortitude (for which reason some, among whom was Razias, have killed themselves thinking to act from fortitude), yet it is not true fortitude, but rather a weakness of soul unable to bear penal evils, as the Philosopher (Ethic. iii, 7) and Augustine (De Civ. Dei 22,23) declare. Whether it is lawful to kill the innocent?Objection 1: It would seem that in some cases it is lawful to kill the innocent. The fear of God is never manifested by sin, since on the contrary “the fear of the Lord driveth out sin” (Ecclus. 1:27). Now Abraham was commended in that he feared the Lord, since he was willing to slay his innocent son. Therefore one may, without sin, kill an innocent person. Objection 2: Further, among those sins that are committed against one’s neighbor, the more grievous seem to be those whereby a more grievous injury is inflicted on the person sinned against. Now to be killed is a greater injury to a sinful than to an innocent person, because the latter, by death, passes forthwith from the unhappiness of this life to the glory of heaven. Since then it is lawful in certain cases to kill a sinful man, much more is it lawful to slay an innocent or a righteous person. Objection 3: Further, what is done in keeping with the order of justice is not a sin. But sometimes a man is forced, according to the order of justice, to slay an innocent person: for instance, when a judge, who is bound to judge according to the evidence, condemns to death a man whom he knows to be innocent but who is convicted by false witnesses; and again the executioner, who in obedience to the judge puts to death the man who has been unjustly sentenced. On the contrary, It is written (Ex. 23:7): “The innocent and just person thou shalt not put to death.”

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

  Whether vengeance should be wrought by means of punishments customary among men?Objection 1: It seems that vengeance should not be wrought by means of punishments customary among men. For to put a man to death is to uproot him. But our Lord forbade (Mat. 13:29) the uprooting of the cockle, whereby the children of the wicked one are signified. Therefore sinners should not be put to death. Objection 2: Further, all who sin mortally seem to be deserving of the same punishment. Therefore if some who sin mortally are punished with death, it seems that all such persons should be punished with death: and this is evidently false. Objection 3: Further, to punish a man publicly for his sin seems to publish his sin: and this would seem to have a harmful effect on the multitude, since the example of sin is taken by them as an occasion for sin. Therefore it seems that the punishment of death should not be inflicted for a sin. On the contrary, These punishments are fixed by the divine law as appears from what we have said above ([3198]FS, Q[105], A[2]). I answer that, Vengeance is lawful and virtuous so far as it tends to the prevention of evil. Now some who are not influenced by motive of virtue are prevented from committing sin, through fear of losing those things which they love more than those they obtain by sinning, else fear would be no restraint to sin. Consequently vengeance for sin should be taken by depriving a man of what he loves most. Now the things which man loves most are life, bodily safety, his own freedom, and external goods such as riches, his country and his good name. Wherefore, according to Augustine’s reckoning (De Civ. Dei xxi), “Tully writes that the laws recognize eight kinds of punishment”: namely, “death,” whereby man is deprived of life; “stripes,” “retaliation,” or the loss of eye for eye, whereby man forfeits his bodily safety; “slavery,” and “imprisonment,” whereby he is deprived of freedom; “exile” whereby he is banished from his country; “fines,” whereby he is mulcted in his riches; “ignominy,” whereby he loses his good name. Reply to Objection 1: Our Lord forbids the uprooting of the cockle, when there is fear lest the wheat be uprooted together with it. But sometimes the wicked can be uprooted by death, not only without danger, but even with great profit, to the good. Wherefore in such a case the punishment of death may be inflicted on sinners. Reply to Objection 2: All who sin mortally are deserving of eternal death, as regards future retribution, which is in accordance with the truth of the divine judgment. But the punishments of this life are more of a medicinal character; wherefore the punishment of death is inflicted on those sins alone which conduce to the grave undoing of others.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The Tunisians were quite right in 1956-and it was a very significant moment in Western (and African) history when they countered the French justification tor remaining in North Atrica with the question "Are the French ready tor self government?" Again, the terms "civilized" and "Christian" begin to have a very strange ring, particularly in the ears of those who have been judged to be neither civilized nor Chris tian, when a Christian nation surrenders to a fo ul and violent orgy, as Germany did during the Third Reich. For the crime of their ancestry, millions of people in the middle of the twen tieth century, and in the heart of Europe-God's citadel- DOWN AT THE CROSS 3 I7 were sent to a death so calculated, so hideous, and so pro longed that no age before this enlightened one had been able to imagine it, much less achieve and record it. Furthermore, those beneath the Western heel, unlike those within the West, are aware that Germany's current role in Europe is to act as a bulwark against the "uncivilized" hordes, and since power is what the powerless want, they understand very well what we of the West want to keep, and are not deluded by our talk of a fr eedom that we have never been willing to share with them. From my own point of view, the fa ct of the Third Reich alone makes obsolete fo rever any question of Christian supe riority, except in technological terms. White people were, and are, astounded by the holocaust in Germany. They did not know that they could act that way. But I very much doubt whether black people were astounded-at least, in the same way. For my part, the fa te of the Jews, and the world's indif fe rence to it, fr ightened me very much. I could not but teel, in those sorrowful years, that this human indiffe rence, con cerning which I knew so much already, would be my portion on the day that the United States decided to murder its Ne groes systematically instead of little by little and catch-as catch-can. I was, of course, authoritatively assured that what had happened to the Jews in Germany could not happen to the Negroes in America, but I thought, bleakly, that the German Jews had probably believed similar counsellors, and, again, I could not share the white man's vision of himself for the very good reason that white men in America do not be have toward black men the way they behave toward each other. When a white man fa ces a black man, especially if the black man is helpless, terrible things are revealed.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  In the latter case, one sometimes had the feeling that they were ducking a blow-that they had en countered their deadliest enemy on a lonely mountain road. The eyes seemed to say, I didn)t do it! Let me pass! and in such a moment one recognized the fr audulent and expedient nature of the American innocence which has always been able to persuade itself that it docs not know what it knows too well . Or, it was exactly like watching someone who finds himself caught in a lie: for a black man abroad is no longer one of "our" niggcrs, is a stranger, not to be controlled by 47 0 NO NAME IN THE STREET anything his countrymen think or say or do. In a word, he is free and thus discovers how little equipped his countrymen are to behold him in that state. In San Francisco, the eyes that watched seemed to feel that the children were deliberately giving away family secrets in the hope of egging on the blacks to destroy the family. And that is precisely what they were doing-helplessly, unconsciously, out of a profound desire to be saved, to live. But the blacks already knew the family secrets and had no interest in them. Nor did they have much confi dence in these troubled white boys and girls. The black trou ble was of a different order, and blacks had to be concerned with much more than their own private happiness or unhap piness. They had to be aware that this troubled white person might suddenly decide not to be in trouble and go home and when he went home, he would be the enemy. Therefore, it was best not to speak too freely to anyone who spoke too fr eely to you, especially not on the streets of a nation which probably has more hired informers working for it, here and all over the world, than any nation in history. True rebels, after all, are as rare as true lovers, and, in both cases, to mis take a fever for a passion can destroy one's life. The black and white confrontation, whether it be hostile, as in the cities and the labor unions, or with the intention of forming a common front and creating the foundations of a new society, as with the students and the radicals, is obviously crucial, containing the shape of the American future and the only potential of a truly valid American identity. No one knows precisely how identities arc forged, but it is safe to say that identities are not invented: an identity would seem to be arri\·cd at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience. It is a long drawn-out and somewhat bewildering and awkward process.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I was made to learn my notions, never imagining that they were useless to anyone older than the prefects who tested us on them. I memorised them religiously, & will never forget them, I suppose. My pleasure when challenged for the colours of Chawker’s hatband and came out with the symmetrical ‘plum-straw-plum-light-blue-plum-straw-plum’ was so obvious that the prefect, Stanbridge, tweaked my ears, & made me falter, though not fatally, in reciting the Seven Birthplaces of Homer. What I was much slower to learn were the notions that weren’t written down, the notions people got into their heads. It wasn’t long before Stanbridge and other, less senior men in the dormitory, started brocking me. ‘Oh, he’s quite a little tweake, isn’t he?’ Stanbridge would say sarcastically, sitting on my bed & patting me with a hand whose gentleness was suddenly disguised with mocking roughness. I was frightened in the near dark. I didn’t know what a tweake was—all I could think of was how Stanbridge tweaked my ears. There was a suppressed excitement in the other men, who gathered around, taking their lead from Stanbridge, emboldened to knowing sarcasm by their numbers. ‘You are a tweake, aren’t you, Nantwich?’ said Morgan, a fat, ugly, Welsh quirister, reviled by the others but being allowed, too, into the menacing conspiracy around me. ‘Tell us the truth.’ He spoke in a false, loving way, stroking my hair. The truth of the matter was I did not know what was going on, but my heart knocked in my breast and I felt sick. I longed for the morning—chapel, & being in my toys again, especially for the discipline and concealment of chapel and books.

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

  Reply to Objection 2: Since prayer is the interpreter of desire, the order of the petitions corresponds with the order, not of execution, but of desire or intention, where the end precedes the things that are directed to the end, and attainment of good precedes removal of evil. Reply to Objection 3: Augustine (De Serm. Dom. in Monte ii, 11) adapts the seven petitions to the gifts and beatitudes. He says: “If it is fear God whereby blessed are the poor in spirit, let us ask that God’s name be hallowed among men with a chaste fear. If it is piety whereby blessed are the meek, let us ask that His kingdom may come, so that we become meek and no longer resist Him. If it is knowledge whereby blessed are they that mourn, let us pray that His will be done, for thus we shall mourn no more. If it is fortitude whereby blessed ere they that hunger, let us pray that our daily bread be given to us. If it is counsel whereby blessed are the merciful, let us forgive the trespasses of others that our own may be forgiven. If it is understanding whereby blessed are the pure in heart, let us pray lest we have a double heart by seeking after worldly things which ere the occasion of our temptations. If it is wisdom whereby blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God, let us pray to be delivered from evil: for if we be delivered we shall by that very fact become the free children of God.” Reply to Objection 4: According to Augustine (Enchiridion cxvi), “Luke included not seven but five petitions in the Lord’s Prayer, for by omitting it, he shows that the third petition is a kind of repetition of the two that precede, and thus helps us to understand it”; because, to wit, the will of God tends chiefly to this—that we come to the knowledge of His holiness and to reign together with Him. Again the last petition mentioned by Matthew, “Deliver us from evil,” is omitted by Luke, so that each one may know himself to be delivered from evil if he be not led into temptation. Reply to Objection 5: Prayer is offered up to God, not that we may bend Him, but that we may excite in ourselves the confidence to ask: which confidence is excited in us chiefly by the consideration of His charity in our regard, whereby he wills our good—wherefore we say: “Our Father”; and of His excellence, whereby He is able to fulfil it—wherefore we say: “Who art in heaven.”

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

  Reply to Objection 2: He that prepares not his soul before prayer by forgiving those against whom he has anything, or in some other way disposing himself to devotion, does not do what he can to be heard by God, wherefore he tempts God implicitly as it were. And though this implicit temptation would seem to arise from presumption or indiscretion, yet the very fact that a man behaves presumptuously and without due care in matters relating to God implies irreverence towards Him. For it is written (1 Pet. 5:6): “Be you humbled . . . under the mighty hand of God,” and (2 Tim. 2:15): “Carefully study to present thyself approved unto God.” Therefore also this kind of temptation is a species of irreligion. Reply to Objection 3: A man is said to pray deceitfully, not in relation to God, Who knows the secrets of the heart, but in relation to man. Wherefore deceit is accidental to the temptation of God, and consequently it does not follow that to tempt God is directly opposed to the truth. Whether the temptation of God is a graver sin than superstition?Objection 1: It would seem that the temptation of God is a graver sin than superstition. The greater sin receives the greater punishment. Now the sin of tempting God was more severely punished in the Jews than was the sin of idolatry; and yet the latter is the chief form of superstition: since for the sin of idolatry three thousand men of their number were slain, as related in Ex. 32:28 [*Septuagint version. The Vulgate has “twenty-three thousand.”], whereas for the sin of temptation they all without exception perished in the desert, and entered not into the land of promise, according to Ps. 94:9, “Your fathers tempted Me,” and further on, “so I swore in My wrath that they should not enter into My rest.” Therefore to tempt God is a graver sin than superstition. Objection 2: Further, the more a sin is opposed to virtue the graver it would seem to be. Now irreligion, of which the temptation of God is a species, is more opposed to the virtue of religion, than superstition which bears some likeness to religion. Therefore to tempt God is a graver sin than superstition. Objection 3: Further, it seems to be a greater sin to behave disrespectfully to one’s parents, than to pay others the respect we owe to our parents. Now God should be honored by us as the Father of all (Malach. 1:6). Therefore. temptation of God whereby we behave irreverently to God, seems to be a greater sin than idolatry, whereby we give to a creature the honor we owe to God. On the contrary, A gloss on Dt. 17:2, “When there shall be found among you,” etc. says: “The Law detests error and idolatry above all: for it is a very great sin to give to a creature the honor that belongs to the Creator.”

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  It is a result of the action of the American institutions, all of which arc racist: it is re velatory of the real and helpless impulse of most white Amer icans toward black people. 804 OTH ER ES SAYS The refore, in a couple of days, blacks may be using the vote to outwit the Final Solution. Yes. The Final Solution. No black person can aff ord to forget that the history of this coun try is genocidal, from where the bu ffalo once roamed to where our ancestors were slaughtered (from New Orleans to New York, from Birmingham to Boston) and to the Caribbean to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Saigon. Oh, yes, let freedom ring. Why are you votin g for Carter, Uncle Ji mmy? Well, don't, first of all, take this as an endorsement. It's meant to be a hard look at the options, which, however, may no longer exist by the time you read this, may no longer exist as I write. I lived in Calif ornia when Ronald Reagan was Governor, and that was a very ugly time-the time of the Black Panther harassment, the beginning (and the end) of the Soledad Brothers, the persecution, and trial, of Angela Davis. That, all that, and much more, but what I really found unspeakable about the man was his contempt, his brutal contempt, for the poor. Perhaps because he is a Southerner, there lives in Carter still-I think-an ability to be tormented. This does not nec essarily mean much, so many people preferring torment to action, or responsibility, and it is, furthermore, a very real question (for some; some would say that it's not a question at all ) as to how much of Carter belongs to Carter. But if he can still be tormented, he can be made to pause-the ma chinery can be made to pause-and we will have to find a way to use that pause. It is terror that informs the American political and social scene-the terror of leaving the house of bondage. It isn't a terror of seeing black people leave the house of bondage, for white people think that they know that this cannot really hap pen, not even to Leontyne Price, or Mohammad Ali, who are, after all, "exceptions," with white blood, and mortal.

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

  Whether it is lawful to kill a man in self-defense?Objection 1: It would seem that nobody may lawfully kill a man in self-defense. For Augustine says to Publicola (Ep. xlvii): “I do not agree with the opinion that one may kill a man lest one be killed by him; unless one be a soldier, exercise a public office, so that one does it not for oneself but for others, having the power to do so, provided it be in keeping with one’s person.” Now he who kills a man in self-defense, kills him lest he be killed by him. Therefore this would seem to be unlawful. Objection 2: Further, he says (De Lib. Arb. i, 5): “How are they free from sin in sight of Divine providence, who are guilty of taking a man’s life for the sake of these contemptible things?” Now among contemptible things he reckons “those which men may forfeit unwillingly,” as appears from the context (De Lib. Arb. i, 5): and the chief of these is the life of the body. Therefore it is unlawful for any man to take another’s life for the sake of the life of his own body. Objection 3: Further, Pope Nicolas [*Nicolas I, Dist. 1, can. De his clericis] says in the Decretals: “Concerning the clerics about whom you have consulted Us, those, namely, who have killed a pagan in self-defense, as to whether, after making amends by repenting, they may return to their former state, or rise to a higher degree; know that in no case is it lawful for them to kill any man under any circumstances whatever.” Now clerics and laymen are alike bound to observe the moral precepts. Therefore neither is it lawful for laymen to kill anyone in self-defense. Objection 4: Further, murder is a more grievous sin than fornication or adultery. Now nobody may lawfully commit simple fornication or adultery or any other mortal sin in order to save his own life; since the spiritual life is to be preferred to the life of the body. Therefore no man may lawfully take another’s life in self-defense in order to save his own life. Objection 5: Further, if the tree be evil, so is the fruit, according to Mat. 7:17. Now self-defense itself seems to be unlawful, according to Rom. 12:19: “Not defending [Douay: ‘revenging’] yourselves, my dearly beloved.” Therefore its result, which is the slaying of a man, is also unlawful. On the contrary, It is written (Ex. 22:2): “If a thief be found breaking into a house or undermining it, and be wounded so as to die; he that slew him shall not be guilty of blood.” Now it is much more lawful to defend one’s life than one’s house. Therefore neither is a man guilty of murder if he kill another in defense of his own life.

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

  Objection 2: Further, every mortal sin turns the heart wholly from God. But fear does not this, for a gloss on Judges 7:3, “Whosoever is fearful,” etc., says that “a man is fearful when he trembles at the very thought of conflict; yet he is not so wholly terrified at heart, but that he can rally and take courage.” Therefore fear is not a mortal sin. Objection 3: Further, mortal sin is a lapse not only from perfection but also from a precept. But fear does not make one lapse from a precept, but only from perfection; for a gloss on Dt. 20:8, “What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted?” says: “We learn from this that no man can take up the profession of contemplation or spiritual warfare, if he still fears to be despoiled of earthly riches.” Therefore fear is not a mortal sin. On the contrary, For mortal sin alone is the pain of hell due: and yet this is due to the fearful, according to Apoc. 21:8, “But the fearful and unbelieving and the abominable,” etc., “shall have their portion in the pool burning with fire and brimstone which is the second death.” Therefore fear is a mortal sin. I answer that, As stated above [3325](A[1]), fear is a sin through being inordinate, that is to say, through shunning what ought not to be shunned according to reason. Now sometimes this inordinateness of fear is confined to the sensitive appetites, without the accession of the rational appetite’s consent: and then it cannot be a mortal, but only a venial sin. But sometimes this inordinateness of fear reaches to the rational appetite which is called the will, which deliberately shuns something against the dictate of reason: and this inordinateness of fear is sometimes a mortal, sometimes a venial sin. For if a man through fear of the danger of death or of any other temporal evil is so disposed as to do what is forbidden, or to omit what is commanded by the Divine law, such fear is a mortal sin: otherwise it is a venial sin. Reply to Objection 1: This argument considers fear as confined to the sensuality. Reply to Objection 2: This gloss also can be understood as referring to the fear that is confined within the sensuality. Or better still we may reply that a man is terrified with his whole heart when fear banishes his courage beyond remedy. Now even when fear is a mortal sin, it may happen nevertheless that one is not so wilfully terrified that one cannot be persuaded to put fear aside: thus sometimes a man sins mortally by consenting to concupiscence, and is turned aside from accomplishing what he purposed doing.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  1t was very frightening-not the gesture itself , but the abjectness of it, and the assumption of a swift and grim com plicity: as my identity was defined by his power, so was my humanity to be placed at the service of his fantasies. If the lives of those children were in those wet, despairing hands, if their future was to be read in those wet, blind eyes, there was reason to tremble. This man, with a phone call, could prevent or provoke a lynching. This was one of the men you called (or had a friend call) in order to get your brother off the prison tarm. A phone call from him might prevent your brother from being dug up, later, during some random ar- TAKE ME TO THE WA TER 391 chaeological expedition. Therefore, one had to be friendly: but the price for this was your cock. This will sound an exa ggerated statement to Americans, who will suppose it to refer, merely , to sexual (or sectional ) abnormality. This supposition misses the point: which is double-edged. The slave knows, however his master may be deluded on this point, that he is called a slave because his manhood has been, or can be, or will be taken from him. To be a slave means that one's manhood is engaged in a dubious battle indeed, and this stony fact is not altered by whatever devotion some masters and some slaves may ha\·e arrived at in relation to each other. In the case of American slave ry, the black man's right to his women, as well as to his children, was simply taken from him, and whatever bastards the white man be gat on the bodies of black women took their condition from the condition of their mother: blacks were not the only stal lions on the slave-breeding farms! And one of the many results of this loveless, money-making conspiracy was that, in giving the masters every conceivable sexual and commercial license, it also emasculated them of any human responsibility-to their women, to their children, to their wives, or to themselves.