GENG 260 Texts

People changed signs from time to time, but *** never did and neither did I. Actually my sign didn't make sense without ***'s. "And so do children what?" one of the women on my side asked me. Have rights, I said, as though it was obvious.

Gross. Gross.

"Que tu es grossier!" John Cabotitched instantly beneath the nourished whiteThat told his story of glory to the World."Don't let It touch me! The blackness! Lord!" he whispered to any handy angel in the sky. . . . John Cabot went down in the smoke and fireAnd broken glass and blood, and he cried "Lord!Forgive these nigguhs that know not what they do.

"

3. That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality.

I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves. Then too, you're constantly being bumped against by those of poor vision. Or again, you often doubt if you really exist. You wonder whether you aren't simply a phantom in other people's minds. Say, a figure in a nightmare which the sleeper tries with all his strength to destroy.

It's when you feel like this that, out of resentment, you begin to bump people back

I was born in the congoI walked to the fertile crescent and built the sphinxI designed a pyramid so tough that a star that only glows every one hundred years falls into the center giving divine perfect lightI am bad

He was sick of his life at home. Day in and day out there was nothing but shouts and bickering. But what could he do? Each time he asked himself that his mind hit a blank wall and he stopped thinking. Across the street directly in front of him, he saw a truck pull to a stop at the curb and two white men in overalls got out with pails and brushes. Yes, he could take the job at ***'s and be miserable, or he could refuse it and starve. It maddened him to think that he did not have a wider choice of action.

Well, he could not stand here all day like this. What was he to do with himself? He tried to decide if he wanted to buy a ten-cent magazine, or go to a movie, or go to the poolroom and talk with the gang, or just loaf around.

began to tell us what the blues were all about. They were not about anything very new.

He and his boys up there were keeping it new, at the risk of ruin, destruction, madness, and death, in order to find new ways to make us listen. For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.

mamamamaif we are nothingwhyshould we sparethe neighborhoodmamamamawho will be next andwhy should we savethe pictures

It did everything it could to discourage the people walking along the street. It found all the dirt and dust and grime on the sidewalk and lifted it up so that the dirt got into their noses, making it difficult to breathe; the dust got into their eyes and blinded them; and the grit stung their skins. It wrapped newspaper around their feet entangling them until the people cursed deep in their throats, stamped their feet, kicked at the paper. The wind blew it back again and again until they were forced to stoop and dislodge the paper with their hands. And then the wind grabbed their hats, pried their scarves from around their necks, stuck its fingers inside their coat collars, blew their coats away from their bodies.

For a brief period after I was grown I went to live alone, like one doing penance, in a loft above a noisy factory in downtown New York and there painted seas of sugar-cane and huge swirling Van Gogh suns and palm trees striding like Tutsi Warriors across a tropical landscape, while the thunderous tread of the machines downstairs jarred the floor beneath my easel, mocking my efforts.

Poor women and women of Color know there is a difference between the daily manifestations of marital slavery and prostitution because it is our daughters who line 42nd Street. If white American feminist theory need not deal with the differences between us, and the resulting difference in our oppressions, then how do you deal with the fact that the women who clean your houses and tend your children while you attend conferences on feminist theory are, for the most part, poor women and women of Color?

An act.

Lies. Device. Not the pure heart, the pumping black heart. You don't ever know that. And I sit here, in this buttoned-up suit, to keep myself from cutting all your throats. .

. If Bessie Smith had killed some white people she wouldn't have needed that music. She could have talked very straight and plain about the world. No metaphors. No grunts.

. . . Just murder! Would make us all sane.

White Americans find it . . . difficult . . .

to divest themselves of the notion that they are in possession of some intrinsic value that black people need, or want. This assumption...makes the solution to the Negro problem depend on the speed with which Negroes accept and adopt white standards..

. [In reality,] the only thing white people have that black people need, or should want, is power—and no one holds power forever. White people cannot, in the generality, be taken as models of how to live. Rather, the white man is himself in sore need of new standards, which will release him from his confusion and place him once again in fruitful communion with the depths of his own being.

"*** should be protected from seeing.

" I didn't like the sound of that—and I doubted that it was possible. "Not protected," I said. "Shown. Shown when we're young kids.

And shown more than once."