| |
Chapter 28
|
|
|
|
|
| |
When everything shows that whites no longer feel so good about
themselves either, it is perhaps as difficult to find real love under the
crystal chandeliers of the self-made millionaire as among those confined to
"shacking together" in the glow of the kerosene lamp.
|
| |
|
|
| |
I had found that one of the most peculiar aspects of Southern
hospitality is the desire to immediately "give" the male visitor a very
attractive "girl." Not only in the old aristocracy, but also among the
"up-and-coming" millionaires, seldom more than a day had passed before they had
supplied me with a "date" from the same class (or more often one aspiring to
become a member of that class), often without even having asked me.
|
| |
|
|
| |
Their attitude towards "white womanhood" seems little better
than their historical relationship to black womanhood, yet this sacred white
womanhood has often been used as one of the many excuses for violent suppression
of blacks.
|
| |
|
|
| |
Our oppression constantly finds new patterns, but nobody who felt really good about themselves could possibly
oppress so devastatingly as we do today.
|
| |
|
|
| |
And the victim today is not only the black family, but increasingly
the children.
|
| |
|
|
| |
We middle class whites, who love to mention that one of our best
friend is black -- to attain moral stature and black recognition -- and who love
to denounce the more primitive racism of others --
|
| |
|
|
| |
--
we continually forget that bigots like the Ku Klux Klan are deeply victimized "loosers" who have themselves
been so shut out of the American dream that they are without any power to affect
the overall quality of black life today.
|
| |
|
|
| |
Students in black universities often laugh at the Klan speech in
my show, for they know all too well that their pain and exclusion is not caused
by a few hooded nuts out in the woods, but by us - the great majority of "good"
law-abiding citizens - who are today silently forcing millions of blacks into
ghettoes, isolation, despair - and finally prisons and death.
|
| |
|
|
| |
In our white guilt from not living up to our own lofty
democratic ideals and Christian values we escape into Bill Cosby shows to cover
up for our ultimate crushing of the black family.
|
| |
|
|
| |
Today more than 70% of black children grow up without a father
and one in ten without either parent - twice as many as when I first came to
America - and three times as many as under slavery.
|
| |
|
|
| |
Therefore the grandmother increasingly becomes the life saver
for many.
|
| |
|
|
| |
Black students, who here after year 2000 manage to succeed and
stay in college in spite of this - the black family's worst oppression since
the slave auctions - often tell me that precisely the grandmother was their
saving angels.
|
| |
|
|
| |
Grandmas hands clapped in church on Sunday morning
|
| |
|
|
|
Grandmas hands played the tambourine so well
|
| |
|
|
|
Grandmas hands used to issue out a warning,
|
| |
|
|
|
she would say: Billy, don't you run so fast,
|
| |
|
|
|
might fall over a piece of glass!
|
| |
|
|
| |
might be snakes there in the grass! |
| |
|
|
|
Grandmas hands, soothed the local unwed mothers...
|
| |
|
| |