Strictly speaking, one cannot legislate love, but what one can do is legislate fairness and justice. If legislation does not prohi...bit our living side by side, sooner or later your child will fall on the pavement and I'll be the one to pick her up. Or one of my children will not be able to get into the house and you'll have to say, "Stop here until your mom comes here." Legislation affords us the chance to see if we might love each other.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have known no experience more distressing than the discovery that Negroes didn't love me. Unutterable loneliness claimed me. I f...elt without roots, like a man without a country ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... two great areas of deafness existed in the South: White Southerners had no ears to hear that which threatened their Dream. And... colored Southerners had none to hear that which could reduce their anger.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... in 1950 a very large slice of the white South stood at the crossroads in its attitude toward its colored citizens and [was] ps...ychologically capable of turning either way.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... not only have we exploited them physically and economically to bring ease to our bodies and our purses, but also we have explo...ited them emotionally to bring us many sublimated satisfactions. Our relationship with Negroes is a many-stringed instrument upon which we play melodies to replenish all the empty places in our hearts.... The parent-child relationship is almost consciously acted out, with the obedience, seeming respect, and acceptance by "our Nigras" going far toward soothing heartaches for the rebellion, arrogance, and rejection we must endure as our real children seize their own lives from us in adolescence. Even the reverse, the child-parent role, is sometimes filled, as we play the part of babyhood helplessness, satisfying immature longings to be waited on and taken care of.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... as a result of generations of betrayal, it's nearly impossible for Southern Negroes to trust a Southern white. No matter what ...he does or what he suffers, a white liberal is never established beyond suspicion in the hearts of the minority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... one of the blind spots of most Negroes is their failure to realize that small overtures from whites have a large significance ...... I now realize that this feeling inevitably takes possession of one in the bitter struggle for equality. Indeed, I share it. Yet I wonder how we can expect total acceptance to step full grown from the womb of prejudice, with no embryo or infancy or childhood stages.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They had supposed their formula was fixed. They had obeyed instructions to devise... A type of cold, a type of hooded gaze. But when the Negroes came they were perplexed. These Negroes looked like men....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I had to kick their law into their teeth in order to save them. However I have heard that sometimes you have to deal... Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore. Or they will haul themselves and you to the trash and the fish beneath.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »