I ... don't doubt for a moment that the revolution will result in a nonracial society. I have just come from being a patient in Gr...oote Schuur Hospital where they now have integrated wards. For the first time in my life, I have seen it working. The patients were mixed, the staff was mixed, and the medical officers were mixed; it was totally integrated. It was beautiful. White and black together. And it works. To me that is terribly exciting.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In not having an appointment at Harvard, I'm in the company of a great many people whose work I admire tremendously, in particular... women of color.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Only the white, tremendous foam of the street has any importance, The new white flowers that are beginning to shoot up about ...now.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The white youth of today have begun to react to the fact that the "American Way of Life" is a fossil of history. What do they care... if their old baldheaded and crew-cut elders don't dig their caveman mops? They couldn't care less about the old, stiffassed honkies who don't like their new dances: Frug, Monkey, Jerk, Swim, Watusi. All they know is that it feels good to swing to way-out body-rhythms instead of dragassing across the dance floor like zombies to the dead beat of mind-smothered Mickey Mouse music.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The "paper tiger" hero, James Bond, offering the whites a triumphant image of themselves, is saying what many whites want desperat...ely to hear reaffirmed: I am still the White Man, lord of the land, licensed to kill, and the world is still an empire at my feet.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I know that I will always be expected to have extra insight into black texts--especially texts by black women. A working-class Jew...ish woman from Brooklyn could become an expert on Shakespeare or Baudelaire, my students seemed to believe, if she mastered the language, the texts, and the critical literature. But they would not grant that a middle-class white man could ever be a trusted authority on Toni Morrison.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we sposed to choke our natural self into the weird..., lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law. Because, in other words, the powerful don't play; they mean to keep that power, and those who are the powerless (you and me) better shape up--mimic/ape/suck--in the very image of the powerful, or the powerful will destroy you--you and our children.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
'Mos anytime you see whitemen spose to fight each other an' you not white, well you know you got trouble, because they blah- blah ...loud about Democrat or Republican an' they huffin' an' puff about democracy someplace else but relentless, see, the deal come down evil on somebody don' have no shirt an' tie, somebody don' live in no whiteman house no whiteman country.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »