The Phoenix index., 1941-04-12
The English People
And Color Prejudice
BY WILLIAM PICKENS

Honolulu Hawaii, and I am wonder
ing what may have happened there
since we have now crowded about
$4,000 soldiers and sailors from con-
tinental United States nto that is
land fortress.
FALSE IMPRESSION
The anti-British completes in
Padmores article would give the
mknowing the impression that Lon
don is like Atlanta or Washington.
That is false impression. None of
these places, including London, is
fit to raise n black child in, but
up 70 this minute London certain
~ tops the list. w.
Not until this present war have
the British been training black
boys from their empire for service
is the air corps and neither has the
United States. They have not before
needed to do so; and white folk in
England are just like the people of
any other race anywhere, that in
times Of peace and plenty only the
locally dominant race Japanese in
Japan, pale races in Mississippi Is
inducted into the fancy" military
services. like airplaning and sea-
going.
In times of peace, when soldier
ing means only marching through
the streets, in Weil-tailored clothes,
with rattling drums, blaring horns
and flying Flags, with no enemy in
sight or mind, then, Dear Reader,
that is always the privilege of the
chosen people. ano only of few
of them.
BASE IS BROADENED
But when real war comes, with
It's trenches and mud, and lice and
maggotS and winged death then the
service base is broadened. To say
that the enemy is to have credit for
making a people do such a natural
thing, has about as much sense in
it as to say: "The prospective lice
anG mud and maggots have COM
PEELED the British. And notice,
when the British begin training
their black boys for the air corps,
they put them in as individuals,
training them along with the white
English boys wasting no good money
and energy on slip and expensive
jim crow. 3:
But when the United States starts
tie Negro for the cavalry or the
air service there is black cavalry
air unit in Illinois. None of these
regiment in Kansas and a Negro
people is perfect, but the British
are ahead just as truly as they
were ahead on the subject of human
slavery, refusing to return our run
away Negroes from Canada, and
ruling in their bewigged courts that
when a slave sets foot on English
soil" and "breathes English air." he
becomes "ipSo facto free"
ARTICLE MISLEADING
Padmore's article is good but
very misleading for an innocent
reader. Padmore is a British citizen
and like many others from the
West Indies, who have at some
time been kicked by some unworthy
British colonial his feeling against
the whites of his empire has be-
come bigger than his world states
manship.
Feeling will influence but should
not be allowed to dominate sound
thinking. Think of Eboue tall black
man from the Caribbean now gov
ernor of French Equatorial Africa;
he is taking all the heart OF Africa
out of the Vichy camp and into the
Free French democratic movement.
Think of Halle Selassie, emperor
of Abyssinia, exile of six years be-
cause of the faithlesSness. of lea
que of nations: he is now fighting
eide bv side with British comrades,
not only for British victory but for
Hard headed blacks everywhere will
Abyssinia.
These black men are hard-headed
choose the same side, for the anti
British side in this fight, from
Japan to Germany, and from Mos
COW to Mussolini, means death to
black leadership, and to the black
masses it would mean what is far
worse than death. SLAVERY.