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242 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1961
The question of color takes up much space in these pages, but the question of color, especially in this country, operates to hide the graver questions of the self. That is precisely why what we like to call “the Negro problem” is so tenacious in American life, and so dangerous. But my own experience proves to me that the connection between American whites and blacks is far deeper and more passionate than any of us like to think.
[…]there was something which all black men held in common, something which cut across opposing points of view, and placed in the same context their widely dissimiliar experience. […] What, in sum, black men held in common was their ache to come into the world as men. And this ache united people who might otherwise have been divided as to what a man should be.
Too great a sense of identity makes a man feel he can do no wrong. And too little does the same.
Nor do I blame anyone in Harlem for making the best of a dreadful bargain. But anyone who lives in Harlem and imagines that he has not struck this bargain, or that what he takes to be his status (in whose eyes?) protects him against the common pain, demoralization and danger, is simply self-deluded.
As long as we can deal with the Negro as a kind of statistic, as something to be manipulated, something to be fled from, or something to be given something to, there is something we can avoid, and what we can avoid is what he really, really means to us.
The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now.
Y en todo caso, lo realmente espantoso del esfuerzo por comunicar a un blanco la realidad de la experiencia negra no tiene nada que ver con el hecho de la raza, sino que depende de la relación del blanco con su propia vida. Él mirará a la cara, en la vida de uno, solo lo que está dispuesto a mirar a la cara en la vida suya.