The Tribune. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1951-19??, 1951-08-18
The White Man
At His Worst

Squ|Hty, Uut tru0 DrOCnernOOO. IL Is my De-
lief that there is but one hope Of achieving
this goal. It lies In our educated colored
citizens accepting t III e responsibility Of
leading the white Southerner into under
standing. rather than into conflict.
The burden of this duty 10 increased by
the fact that usost white persons definitely
are at their worst when they make their
first fumbling efforts toward brotherhood.
Well bred Southerners who have never
questioned the rishtness of white supreme
acy, though they are dead weights, are
seldom tornents to Negroes in their COM
nnunities. They arc prejudiced but kind,
aloof but courteous.
Once they begin to awaken to their true
place in society, however, and to the right
full place of their brown brothers by their
sides, their inept attempts to move out of
the white race into the human race sud-
denly make conspicuous their many mis-
conceptions. The discerning Negro notices
two distinct types among them, each insult
ferab1e in his own way. These are the
average confused citizen and the novice
crusader.
The average white citizen as he APP
proaches conversion is painful to the Negro
chiefly because he launches splashingly in
to half measures which only accent his un-
willingness to do the right thing. This is
when he leaves off calling you Ned, but
still finding it impossible to call you MIR.
Roberts, he leans heavily ON pronouns.
He says to you, eyes bright in anticipa-
ton OF your gratitude, "You know what I
think? think that segregation in movies
and city buses is wrong don't mind sit
ting by Negro at all"
He makes opportunities to talk to you
but never talks about anything except the
race problem. He is keenly interested in
lions about them, as though all Negroes
thought and felt alike. He chuckles when
reference is m e to social distinctions
within the Negro race, and obviously ex-
poets to find his nanny type chore wom-
an out walking arm in arm with the Negro
high school principal.
But infuriating as the half concerted
average citizen may be, he is tepid milk
compared to the half converted white cruz
sader. II er Q you really have something
which only Negro martyr can long en-
dure only to be thrust aloft as a project, a
cause, pitiable wrong to be righted New
err is the Negro 20 much chattel as when
mirrowed in the burning eye Of the novice
crusader.
In hot pursuit of your sufferings and
the indignities heaped upon you, he UNI
hesitatingly prizes into your private affairs
asking you personal questions which he
would not ask white man and which no
Negro would be 80 rude as to ask you. He
tags all colored people, including yourself,
as tragic figures, struggling in a quicksand
of injustice, without power Of self-help and
without comfort of any kind. He embar
rasses you by turning spray of white
wash on your character, attributing noble
motives to your normal human frailties.
To Negroes of half again his size and brain
power he says in effect, "There, there, lit
tie brother. I'LL defend you now"
Confronted wi t h such incipient white
converts tho Negro who retreats into u
shell of half concealed contempt and hos.
fifty can hardly be blamed. Almost sup
erhuman abjectivity 10 demanded of him
IN order to see either of these awful OBJ
jects as future brothers. The unawakened
white man who keeps his distance Obvious.
ly is preferable to these cloying specimens
who specialize In doing and saying the
wrong things.
Yet the Negro who, with the aid Of his
will power plus ell his Christian virtues,
continues to bear and to guide his white
brothers during this crisis in their lives,
will make the happy discovery that, like
other crises, it is brief. More than few
months of coaching are seldom required
to turn the confused but eager average
citizen into true brother, and the novice
crusader into true champion of human