So long, then, as humble black folk, voluble with thanks, receive barrels of old clothes from lordly and generous whites, there is much mental peace and moral satisfaction. Such sense of duty assumes two things: a real possession of the heritage and its frank appreciation by the humble-born.
The first minor note is struck, all unconsciously, by those worthy souls in whom consciousness of high descent brings burning desire to spread the gift abroad, - the obligation of nobility to the ignoble. Here it is that the comedy verges to tragedy. And if all this be a lie, is it not a lie in a great cause? In fine, that if from the world were dropped everything that could not fairly be attributed to White Folk, the world would, if anything, be even greater, truer, better than now. How easy, then, by emphasis and omission to make children believe that every great soul the world ever saw was a white man’s soul that every great thought the world ever knew was a white man’s thought that every great deed the world ever did was a white man’s deed that every great dream the world ever sang was a white man’s dream. Everything considered, the title to the universe claimed by White Folk is faulty.
#Soul worker warlike fighting title free
Next it appears dampening generous enthusiasm in what we once counted glorious to free the slave is discovered to be tolerable only in so far as it freed his master! Do we sense somnolent writhings in black Africa or angry groans in India or triumphant banzais in Japan? “To your tents, O Israel!” These nations are not white!Īfter the more comic manifestations and the chilling of generous enthusiasm come subtler, darker deeds. Its first effects are funny: the strut of the Southerner, the arrogance of the Englishman amuck, the whoop of the hoodlum who vicariously leads your mob.
Wave on wave, each with increasing virulence, is dashing this new religion of whiteness on the shores of our time. Now what is the effect on a man or a nation when it comes passionately to believe such an extraordinary dictum as this? That nations are coming to believe it is manifest daily. Then always, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I am given to understand that whiteness is the ownership of the earth forever and ever, Amen! “But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?” I am quite straight-faced as I ask soberly: Why? That is not for me to say, but be brave! Do your work in your lowly sphere, praying the good Lord that into heaven above, where all is love, you may, one day, be born - white!” I know, too well, that the curse of God lies heavy on you. “My poor, un-white thing! Weep not nor rage. This assumption that of all the hues of God whiteness alone is inherently and obviously better than brownness or tan leads to curious acts even the sweeter souls of the dominant world as they discourse with me on weather, weal, and woe are continually playing above their actual words an obligato of tune and tone, saying: Today we have changed all that, and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has discovered that it is white and by that token, wonderful!
#Soul worker warlike fighting title skin
The Middle Age regarded skin color with mild curiosity and even up into the eighteenth century we were hammering our national manikins into one, great, Universal Man, with fine frenzy which ignored color and race even more than birth.
The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction. The discovery of personal whiteness among the world’s peoples is a very modern thing - a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed. And yet as they preach and strut and shout and threaten, crouching as they clutch at rags of facts and fancies to hide their nakedness, they go twisting, flying by my tired eyes and I see them ever stripped - ugly, human. They deny my right to live and be and call me misbirth! My word is to them mere bitterness and my soul, pessimism. This knowledge makes them now embarrassed, now furious. I know their thoughts and they know that I know. Rather I see these souls undressed and from the back and side. Nor yet is my knowledge that which servants have of masters, or mass of class, or capitalist of artisan.
Mine is not the knowledge of the traveler or the colonial composite of dear memories, words and wonder. Not as a foreigner do I come, for I am native, not foreign, bone of their thought and flesh of their language. I view them from unusual points of vantage. High in the tower, where I sit above the loud complaining of the human sea, I know many souls that toss and whirl and pass, but none there are that intrigue me more than the Souls of White Folk.
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