The Measure of a Man

by Sidney Poitier

  The truth of the matter is that the formation of this business relationship was almost a literal “pre-enactment” of the situation in the film we were about to make. The black man was coming for dinner, and we didn’t usually do that. Now mind you, these were good, enlightened, liberal people. These were major Hollywood stars putting their ideals to the test—but even for them, the fact still remained that “we don’t usually do that.” They were going to enter into an intense creative partnership with a black man—a partnership in which they would take on one of the primal taboos of our culture, interracial marriage—and “we don’t usually do that,” either.

  Should I have felt condescended to by all the scrutiny from Tracy and Hepburn? Should I have been angry and confrontational? After all, they’d had ample opportunity to know my work. At that time I’d made over thirty films and had won the Oscar for best actor a few years earlier. If it had been Paul Newman they were going to do a movie with, would they have checked him out so thoroughly? But the fact of the matter is I’m not Paul Newman. If Paul had played the part of the young doctor coming to marry their daughter, there would have been no drama.

  Having done A Patch of Blue, I had already crossed this societal boundary, but the culture at large, even the liberal and enlightened subculture, had not. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn were exceedingly decent people, and I think their politics were sound, but I still think asking them to be any more “liberated” in the America that we knew at that time would have been expecting a hell of a lot too much.

  So I gave them the benefit of the doubt; I looked at them as ordinary, decent folks. And in fact they turned out to be that—and a hell of a lot more. But they were anxious early on, for good reason, and they simply had to find out about me.

  Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, like most of their audience, lived in America. More important, they lived in Hollywood, and in their hometown the intrusion of an African-American suitor wasn’t a part of the daily practice of the hundreds of marriages that they were privy to in their lives and on the screen.

  If they had known twenty-five or thirty black people, ten of whom were actors, three of whom were doctors, four of whom were maids, six of whom were schoolteachers, and some of whom were workaday people, then they would have come to the question informed on a certain level. But being Americans of the middle class or higher, the only black people they would have encountered were, for the most part, the servants in their home and at the studios—blacks who attended Miss Hepburn in whatever ways she required. And as for Mr. Tracy, he struck me as a very human guy who, if given the chance, would come down every time on the side of decency and fairness for all. Now, maybe I thought that in part because of the memorable role he played in Bad Day at Black Rock, in which he was wonderfully compassionate to a character played by a black actor named Juano Hernandez. I do know that they were demonstrably independent people. While I don’t know what the design of their social life was, I doubt that either one of them had ever had all that much social contact with people of color.

  Obviously, Tracy and Hepburn knew Stanley Kramer; in fact, Tracy was Kramer’s favorite actor. The two men had worked together on Inherit the Wind, Judgment at Nuremberg, and It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. Thus Tracy and Hepburn were obliged to bring to bear on me the kind of respect they had for Kramer, and they had to say to themselves (and I’m sure they did). This kid has to be pretty okay, because Stanley is nuts about working with him.

  As for my part in all this, all I can say is that there’s a place for people who are angry and defiant, and sometimes they serve a purpose, but that’s never been my role. And I have to say, too, that I have great respect for the kinds of people who are able to recycle their anger and put it to different uses.

  On the other hand, even Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi, who certainly didn’t appear angry when they burst upon the world, would never have burst upon the world in the first place if they hadn’t, at one time in their lives, gone through much, much anger and much, much resentment and much, much anguish.

  Anguish and pain and resentment and rage are very human forces. They can be found in the breasts of most human beings at one time or another. On very rare occasions there comes a Gandhi, and occasionally there comes a Martin Luther King, Jr., and occasionally there comes a guy like Paul Robeson or a guy like Nelson Mandela. When these people come along, their anger, their rage, their resentment, their frustration—these feelings ultimately mature by will of their own discipline into a positive energy that can be used to fuel their positive, healthy excursions in life.

  It wasn’t imaginary circumstances or vicarious experiences that engendered harsh emotions in the men I’ve named. It was real situation, for them and for the people around them. But they had some manna, some mechanism, some strength, some discipline, some vision that allowed them to convert that anger into fuel. Anger is negative energy—a destructive force—but they converted it into fuel, into positive energy. Their transformed anger fueled them in positive ways; in each case that’s exactly what happened.

  Nelson Mandela—you think he loved the apartheid practitioners? Oh, no. You think he loved the guys who sentenced him to death and then put him on a rockpile, promising him that he would work there for six months, and left him working there for thirteen years, ruining his legs and his knees? Went in a robust prizefighter in the best of physical condition, and they worked him till his feet and ankles suffered lasting damage. But he came out of prison with a respect for himself, for his values, for his cause, and no hatred for the men and women who had spent a commensurate part of their lives trying to destroy him. He resented or disliked or hated what they represented, but he was human enough to see them, frailties and all, as human beings. As did Martin Luther King, Jr., who said as much. As did Gandhi, who said as much.

  Well, I certainly don’t live this ideal every day, but I believe in it with my whole being. If I were asked for an evaluation of myself, I would readily admit to my sins, such as they are, to my weaknesses, my frailties, my shortcomings. I do that all the time, and the reason I can do that and not be ashamed is that I’m willing almost always to try my best. And when I fall short of my reach for something after having tried my best—even when I fall so short that my attempt winds up in sinful behavior—or when my weaknesses tug at my ankles, I accept that. I mean, I accept that failing, but I can’t accept my sinfulness, my weaknesses, my frailties unless I’ve really tried to reach above them.

  Wherever there’s a configuration in which there are the powerful and the powerless, the powerful, by and large, aren’t going to feel much of anything about this imbalance. After a while the powerful become accustomed to experiencing the power to their benefit in ways that are painless. It’s the air they breathe, the water they swim in.

  The powerless, who aren’t swimming in that comfort and that ease, look at the inequity quite differently than the guy across town who’s in the comfort seat. But that goes for Japanese and Chinese, that goes for African-Americans and white Americans, that goes for Native Americans and white Americans, that goes for Hispanic Americans and white Americans. It goes for the British and their colonial possessions, many of which are now called commonwealth countries. However much prodding they get from the powerless or the disenfranchised or the slaves, those in power just aren’t inclined toward introspection or remorse.

  If we examine our own history, we see quite clearly how long it took before there was any acknowledgment of the inequities in our society. Through most of the history of film, we were making movies, for Christ’s sake, where the Indians were all bad guys.

  When you’re addressing power, don’t expect it to crumble willingly. If you’re going to say, “Hey now, look you guys, please look at what you did and look at yourselves and punish yourselves and at least try to square this thing, right?”—well, you’ll make slower progress at that than you would expect. I mean, even the most modest expectations are going to be unfulfilled.

  Think about i
t. Today there are still people all over the world who maintain that the Holocaust didn’t happen. There are people in the United States—people among that power echelon we speak of—who maintain that all slaves were happy. There are those power symbols that always say, “Well, it was for the good of the states. It was for the cohesion of the political process.” There are myriad justifications for denial.

  There are also people who say, “Hey, after thirty years of affirmative action, they’ve got it made. Black people—it’s their own fault if they can’t make it today.”

  Yeah, well, of course they say that. And they say it not just about black people. They say it in every country. We did something for you people, whoever “you” are. And we think that’s quite enough now.

  That’s the gist of it: we’ve done something, and we think it’s enough. It may not be perfect, but it damn sure comes close to being okay. Now let us hear you applaud that for a little while. And thank us. And you can take that hat off your head when you come in here thanking us.

  That’s the way it is. But let’s not get stuck there. We have miles to go before we sleep. We have lots to do, and some things just aren’t going to get done, you know?

  A lot of black leaders, along with a lot of sympathetic white people, would say it’s too early in this country for forgiveness. We haven’t dealt with accountability yet, admission of guilt yet. And we certainly don’t have equality yet. But among the things that we must try to get done is the nurturing of a civilized, fair, principled, humane society. Now, if a part of that nurturing—part of the movement toward it, some of the efforts spent in that direction—would bring us to a new understanding, a new acceptance, even some forgiveness, what then? And not just forgiveness from the people who’ve been wronged. Forgiveness works two ways, in most instances. People have to forgive themselves too. The powerful have to forgive themselves for their behavior. That should be a sacred process.

  Compassion for other human beings has to extend to the society that’s been grinding the powerless under its heel. The more civilized the society becomes, the more humane it becomes; the more it can see its own humanity, the more it sees the ways in which its humanity has been behaving inhumanly. This injustice of the world inspires a rage so intense that to express it fully would require homicidal action; it’s self-destructive, destroy-the-world rage. Simply put, I’ve learned that I must find positive outlets for anger or it will destroy me. I have to try to find a way to channel that anger to the positive, and the highest positive is forgiveness.

  Put simply, I’ve learned that I must find positive outlets for anger or it will destroy me. There is a certain anger; it reaches such intensity that to express it fully would require homicidal rage—self-destructive, destroy-the-world rage—and its flame burns because the world is so unjust. I have to try to find a way to channel that anger to the positive, and the highest positive is forgiveness.

  When I was barely sixteen, still back in Miami, late one night I was stranded in a white, middle-class neighborhood. I had gone to the dry cleaners in “our” part of town, only to discover that my clothes weren’t yet ready. This was a major problem for me, because it was already late afternoon and I was planning to leave town the next day. The cleaners told me that I could try to pick up my stuff at the dry-cleaning plant across town. So I took the bus across town to this plant, but my clothes still weren’t ready. Compounding the problem, by then the buses had stopped running and there I was, left high and dry and extremely out of place.

  I focused my attention on passing cars heading in the general direction of “colored town.” Whenever I saw one that appeared to have black occupants, I would then—and only then—raise a hitchhiking thumb in the hope of flagging a ride. The first vehicle to stop was the unmarked police car that I had mistakenly thought to contain a black family.

  I knew I was in trouble when the window on the front passenger side rolled down and the cop sitting there pointed to his right and said, “See that alley over there, boy? Get your ass up in there. Now.” After a quick assessment of the situation, something inside me assumed a steadying control and I complied. The unmarked police car then rolled into the alley behind me.

  There was no one else around. Whatever happened, there would be no witnesses. When I turned back around, I saw the muzzle of a revolver sticking through the open rear window on the driver’s side, pointed at my head. Through that open window I could hear the dialogue inside the vehicle: “What should we do with this boy?” “Find out what he’s doing over here.” “Should we shoot him here?” I could see that the hammer of the gun was cocked, and I was scared out of my mind—but mad too, furious at what appeared to be their need to belittle me.

  I told them about taking the bus to the dry-cleaning plant, about trying to get my stuff, but the talk in the car only got meaner as the questioning intensified. The officer behind the wheel said, “Boy, if we let you go, you think you can walk all the way home without looking back once?”

  “Yes, sir.” I replied.

  “Think about it now,” he challenged. “‘Cuz if you look back, just once, we gonna shoot you. Think you can do that?”

  “Yes, sir,” I reassured him.

  “All right, you go ahead now. We’ll be right behind you.”

  I exited the alley, turned right onto the main street, and proceeded to walk the next fifty blocks—never once looking back. By shifting my eyes, but not my head, ever so slightly to the right, I could see that police car reflected in the plate-glass windows I passed. The cops were there, right on my tail, and there they stayed for the entire fifty blocks, until I turned the corner to the place where I was living with my relatives. At that point they sped away.

  Fifty blocks is a long time to think about what’s happening to you, to stew in the insane injustice of it all. But it’s also a good long time to internalize messages such as discipline, independence, the value of character, and toughness of mind.

  I’ve seen reports on the news about parents whose children were murdered, and these parents sought out the murderers to get to know them and try to help them, which is astounding until you think it through. In essence, what else could they do? Sure, they could take revenge, destroy the world. But that’s the worst hurt a person could have: to see his or her child senselessly murdered. So there are people who find a way to turn even that horrible, destructive energy into something positive.

  It comes down to changing the way you look at a particular injustice. The parents whose child has been murdered seek to understand the murderer and to go in and try to salvage whatever is salvageable in human terms—in this particular case, a kernel of goodness in the murdered. Well, the parents don’t arrive there three days after the child has been murdered, nor do they arrive there some weeks after they’ve buried their child. They go through what’s probably an unbearable hell, because striving for control within them are the various human forces that command us: hatred, anger, fear, a sense of revenge. All of those forces have to play out individually and in groups and sometimes in juxtaposition one to the other.

  And when those parents are unable to find easy answers, they have to face their pain. It’s when they do that—somewhere in that confrontation—that they may find some suggestion, some indication, some hint, some intuition that will lead them toward looking at the circumstances differently. And one day, one moment, one minute, one second somewhere along the line, they’re going to realize that there’s no way for them to live with the requirements of their anger, with the requirements of their rage, with the requirements of their hatred. They have to find peace, because they won’t get any peace from rerunning those emotions. Somewhere along the line, I guess out of nature’s inexplicable ways, they stumble on a light (or they consciously arrive at that light, or it comes from someplace unknown), and the seed of forgiveness is illuminated.

  Did I always have that peace? No. Wasn’t I an angry young man when I played the teenager in Blackboard Jungle? Certainly I was a different young man when I wa
s nine or ten, and when I was twelve or fifteen, and when I was twenty-seven. So how did I deal with my rage? I dealt with it in ways that were shaped by my early life, my family surroundings, my friends, the fact that I was a member of the black community that was indeed the majority of people in the country. All those things interplayed with each other over my early years to put a certain kind of youngster on that boat heading for Florida in 1943. And when that kid got to Florida and Florida said, “Oh, wow! Let’s sit this kid down and tell him, or show him, or explain to him what the rules are,” it was too late. You see, by then I had already fashioned my own rules—rules quite contrary to what Florida was then saying to me.

  That rage wasn’t given very fertile ground in my early, early years on Cat Island and then in Nassau. It was well in its formative stages in the Bahamas, but it never came to the kind of fruition it did in Florida. Florida was in-your-face stuff. Florida was asking you who you were, and you were telling Florida who you were, and then Florida said to you. “No, that’s not who you are. This is who you are, and this is who you will be.” And I said no, and the more Florida said yes, the more that fed my rage.

  I didn’t try to grab a gun from one of the cops and have a shootout with them in that alley in Miami, because that wasn’t my nature. That would have been self-destructive. My rage would have destroyed me. The sense of survival I had learned on Cat Island served me well.

  Social movement doesn’t come all at once, just as it doesn’t come out of nowhere. There are moments when it captures the news, like the National Guard in Little Rock, and then we don’t hear anything about it nationally for a year, two years, three years, four years, five years—and then wham! So much happened in the ten-year period between making The Defiant Ones and making Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night, and To Sir, with Love that when you look at the first picture set against the latter three, it’s as if, culturally, far more time than a decade had gone by.