St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1948-11-26
Is the Dear Brother
Wise or Dumb"

"ASC VI DUAAAD'
What a strange and puzzling
personality is Americas citizen of
color! Enigmatic, contradictory, il
logical and inconsistent! A vaude-
vile comic used to muse about him
in a hilarious monologue: He is a
puzzling character, you look for
him by water and he comes by
land. You ask him where he is
going and he tells you where he
has been. You have a hard time
trying to figure ole Hockway. But
like Old Man River, he just keeps
rolling along"
The darker citizen is master of
the unexpected. He is an artist in
concealing his concepts. He is a
mysterious and perplexing char
acter. But he is thinking. Even
though the process and ConClu-
sions reached are sometimes in
applicable.
Take the case of Mr.. Henry
Wallace. Ever since Nineteen
Hundred and Forty-four, when
Mr.. Wallace threw wrench in
the process of the Democratic par
ty at Chicago, where he Numbered
out for civil rights" colored peo-
pie pealed out in strident notes,
We Want Wallace" But they
proved on election day that they
did not want Wallace after all.
Here is a definite and conclusive
instance where the colored people
did some foxy thinking.
But he will turn right around
tomorrow and blow in his bank
roll of a gaudy bauble. For a
glistening trinket. He will work
steadily for a while and then
make a sacrifice to the gods of
chance and fun. Peculiarly, he
will make some sort Of cursory
and superficial study of his po-
litical status and will then switch
suddenly and demonstrate gross
ineptitude for his economic well
fare. He INDUCES in a most sing
ular form of thinking and rea-
soning, but he is undeniably in
dulging in some sort Of thought
operation.
Some say that he is supremacy
stupid. Others opine that he is
silly and impressionable. Many
more avow that he is crafty and
foxy and gets more genuine fun
out of life than any of his contem-
poraries.
Our chameleon brother has
stumped and dumbfounded the
experts, particularly the Repub-
lican sharks. To them he is now
a creature of fourth dimenSional
character. Yet the colored man
seems to have a peculiar genius
for following the path of the
StrawS in the wind.
Despite the ridicule and deri-
sion heaped on him he reveals
irrefutable proof that he is pos
seSsed with some uncanny, sixth
sense of the trends of the times.
He is no Communist, but he
sits in with the Reds and takes
cognizance of their palaver. He
firmly realizes that his category
is that of the have notS." Upon
occasions he will take few pages
out of the Reds notebook and will
pressure" with them. But he will
stop dead in his tracks as Ran
dolph did on the issue Of the jim
crow draftees and the March On
Washington" He sometimes seems
to be autocrat of the psychological
moment.
The colored American floun-
derS, puSSyfoots, backtracks, con-
cedes, conciliates and sometimes
compromises, but just when he
has been tabled as being dormant,
as stultifed, he shouts out and
bounces up and brazenly takes a
stand for his civil rights. He seems
to sense how to put in his plug at
the right time and at the right
place. ManifeStly. this requires
smart thinking.
II must be concluded that the
colored citizens of these United
States have been grossly under
estimated
Sometimes the peculiar course
of colored people proves disgust
ing and reprehenSible. But he is
thinking and in his tom-tomS, abb
original fashion, maybe he is far
ahead Of the streamlined man in
white.-Jos. D. Bib in the Pitts