Black Like Me: November 16–29, 1959

Father Guste, a parish priest of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, born and reared in the South, wrote the book to clarify the problems of racial justice for those “men of good will” who are sincerely alarmed by “the Problem.”

He feels an indulgent superiority whenever he sees these evidences of the white man’s frailty.

He cannot understand how the white man can show the most demeaning aspects of his nature and at the same time delude himself into thinking he is inherently superior.

His seamed face showed the concern and sympathy of one human for another in a predicament every man understands.

With a Negro, they assumed they need give no semblance of self-respect or respectability.

They appeared to think that the Negro has done all of those “special” things they themselves have never dared to do. They carried the conversation into the depths of depravity.

I note these things because it is harrowing to see decent-looking men and boys assume that because a man is black they need show him none of the reticences they would out of respect, show the most derelict white man.

These latter, no matter how frank, have generally a robust tone that says: “We are men.

This is an enjoyable thing to do and to discuss, but it will never impugn the basic respect we give one another; it will never distort our humanity.

In this, the atmosphere, no matter how coarse, has a verve and an essential joviality that casts out morbidity.

Though he pretended to be above such ideas as racial superiority and spoke with genuine warmth, the entire context of his talk reeked of preconceived ideas to the contrary.

Well, you people don’t seem to have the inhibitions we have.

Negroes don’t have much neuroses, do they?

He was so obtuse he did not realize the implied insult in his astonishment that a black man could do anything but say “yes, sir” and mumble four-letter words.

For instead of seeing it as a manifestation of some poor human charity, he might view it as confirmation that Negroes are insensitive to sexual aberration, that they think nothing of it—and this would carry on the legend that has so handicapped the Negro.

“Yes, but Negroes have more illegitimate children, earlier loss of virginity and more crime—these are established facts,” he insisted without unkindness.

He has grown up and now sees his children grow up in squalor.

He is thwarted in his need to be father-of-the-household. When he looks at his children and his home, he feels the guilt of not having given them something better.

She gets pregnant sometimes and then the vicious cycle is given impetus.

He was boisterous, loud and guileless. I could only conclude that he was color blind, since he appeared totally unaware that I was a Negro.

I thought of Maritain’s conclusion that the only solution to the problems of man is the return of charity (in the old embracing sense of caritas, not in the stingy literal sense it has assumed in our language and in our days) and metaphysics.

As always, the conversation stalemated with “None of it really makes any sense.”

It is rankling, too, to be encouraged to buy all of one’s goods in white stores and then be refused soda-fountain or restroom service.

I stared at my black hands, saw the gold wedding band and mumbled something meaningless, hoping he would see my reticence.

He overrode my feelings and the conversation grew more salacious.

The grotesque hypocrisy slapped me as it does all Negroes.

He entertained it, his voice unctuous with pleasure and cruelty.

“Please,” I pleaded, not needing to feign abjection. “I’ve been without food and water all day.”

These moments of night when the swamp and darkness surrounded them evoked an immense loneliness, a dread, a sense of exile from the rest of humanity.

When the awareness of it strikes, a man either suffocates with despair or he turns to cling to his woman, to console and seek consolation.

One can scarcely conceive the full horror of it unless one is a parent who takes a close look at his children and then asks himself how he would feel if a group of men should come to his door and tell him they had decided—for reasons of convenience to them—that his children’s lives would henceforth be restricted, their world smaller, their educational opportunities less, their future mutilated.

No one, not even a saint, can live without a sense of personal value. The white racist has masterfully defrauded the Negro of this sense.

It is the least obvious but most heinous of all race crimes, for it kills the spirit and the will to live.

The two great arguments—the Negro’s lack of sexual morality and his intellectual incapacity—are smoke screens to justify prejudice and unethical behavior.

All the cherished question-begging epithets applied to the Negro race, and widely accepted as truth even by men of good will, simply prove untrue when one lives among them.

They feared that one of their own might commit an act of violence that would jeopardize their position by allowing the whites to say they were too dangerous to have their rights.

I saw smiles, benign faces, courtesies—a side of the white man I had not seen in weeks, but I remembered too well the other side.

My inclination was to marvel at the feel of the carpet beneath my feet, to catalogue the banal miracle of every stick of furniture, every lamp, the telephone, to go and wash myself in the tile shower—or again to go out into the street simply to experience what it was like to walk into all the doors, all the joints and movies and restaurants, to talk to white men in the lobby without servility, to look at women and see them smile courteously.

I looked into their eyes and saw sincerity and wanted to say: “Don’t you know you are prattling the racist poison?”