Reluctant Neighbors

by Braithwaite, E. R. ;

  Remembering my return to Guyana in 1964 and visiting the old school house which had changed so little in the intervening years. One of my former teachers, Miss Imla Friday, still alive and active. The honor roll on the wall with the names of the high achievers, mine among them. The pride which threatened to burst me the day my name was added to the list, the same pride reflected in my mother’s face.

  “Integrated schools, I take it.”

  “What else? The single imperative was learning. The system required it. The teachers demanded it. Parents encouraged it.” Think of it now, I believe those black American students were surprised to hear me say that their own so-called “ghetto” schools were considerably better equipped than those in which I had my early education. Irrespective of how poor they were, Guyanese parents bore the whole cost of every notebook, textbook, pen, pencil and anything else their children needed, so the pressure to learn, to compete successfully, was constant.

  “You think it’s different here?”

  “For blacks it is. In Guyana we all had access to the highest levels of education available within the country, and for those who could afford it, the highest levels available outside our country, provided we could meet the academic requirements for entrance. By comparison with your standards our schools were primitive. We were short of plant and equipment and books. But we were spurred on by ambition, competition and achievement. Parents, children and teachers believed that learning was the open sesame to the good life; the harder the student worked the greater his rewards.”

  “That has always been and still is true for us.”

  “Is it? For something to be true people must believe in it, and to believe they must see it happen among themselves. During my childhood in Guyana there were the many living examples of success for me to emulate. The lawyers, doctors and others, mainly trained in England and returned to pursue successful careers. Inevitably for me and other youngsters, our sights were set on these same English universities, but that was only because we had no similar institutions at home to foreshorten the view. What mattered is that we believed in ambition and our ability to achieve. Few young American blacks share that belief. As I see it the long decades of proscriptions brutally enforced have marked black youngsters in their most private place—their ambition. Very few are prepared to embark on the unfamiliar.”

  “But they’re in school, so they have the opportunity to learn and develop. If they fail to achieve, the fault is with themselves and their teachers, I would suppose.” Cool again. Controlled again. Comfortably ready to dismiss the whole thing with those few words. Unwittingly pushing me further and further towards the edge of anger. Why the hell was I bothering to discuss it with him?

  “Let’s not assume that schools by themselves are all-important,” I said. “They are merely complementary to the multitude of other teaching agents which surround us. Their function should be to help and encourage our understanding of the things we see and hear, and to take that understanding further and deeper. Your children, the white ones, see and hear, and believe in their entitlement to success. Their schools re-enforce, develop and channel that belief into productive effort. Do you agree with that?” Patient as hell with him.

  “I’m listening. Go ahead with the point you’re making.”

  “Your children are taught that they represent the American majority, the whites, and that everything within your social and economic system is designed to ensure the comfort and security of that majority. They are the heirs to the land of the free. They are the “all” for whom the Constitution promises freedom and justice. Are you with me?”

  No answer.

  “Now let’s look at the others. Particularly the descendants of the slaves. The noninheritors. The nontitlists. They are reminded daily that they are “the minority,” allowed by your grace and favor to have the jobs you do not want; to live in the houses and districts you have abandoned. Their children have no entitlement. To read or hear or watch any news coverage is to be reminded that they are excluded. Busing. Integration. Desegregation. Low-income housing. Zoning laws. Burning crosses against a darkening sky. You name it. Through television these issues are piped right into their homes, fed into them with each mouthful of food, each lungful of air. For them, ambition cannot be sufficient in itself. It needs to be supported by the belief in opportunity, and demonstrated within their familiar environment. Would you agree?”

  “Are you suggesting that there are no ambitious blacks? That no black children are stirred by the urge to achieve? Sorry, I don’t buy that. Do you know anything about our national games? Baseball? Football? Basketball? They’re dominated by blacks who are paid fabulous sums. Wouldn’t you call them ambitious?”

  “Not particularly. Blacks are capable of much more than crude physical effort. Or even controlled, trained physical effort. There are far more nonathletic people in the world than there are athletes. Black or white. So what about the black youngster who is not interested enough or coordinated enough to become an athletic star? What of his intellect? Why do you insist on seeing us only in terms of muscles? I’m not impressed by the ballplayers who become rich. They become rich only because their special prowess makes the whites who employ them even richer. Do you realize that, were the outlets available, many blacks who have become ballplayers might have set their sights and interests and imagination to work on other areas of attainment? The law? Medicine? Engineering? Architecture?”

  “So you’re saying that the schools are a waste of time, for blacks?”

  “No.” Keeping the anger down. Cooling it. “I’m saying no such thing. I’m telling you that for white children the school complements the out-of-school life. For blacks there’s very little in the schools and even less in their out-of-school life which fosters development and ambition. Most of it is spent in a state of frustration with everything around them, including home and parents. So what’s there for the schools to complement? Frustration? Apathy? Rage? Is that a condition conducive to ambition?”

  “I suspect you’re deliberately bending certain things to suit your argument. I see many instances of ambitious blacks making it to the top. Not athletes nor entertainers. Professionals in other fields. Congressmen and women. Employees in state and federal positions. Aren’t they ambitious?”

  “Why certainly. But each case is another example of survival in grim spite of prevailing pressures to the contrary. Talk with any of them and you’ll soon discover that each had to create his own area of belief in himself without recourse to the community around him. Whites succeed because of opportunities to success. A few blacks make it in spite of the near absence of opportunity. See the difference?”

  “I’m afraid it’s you who have failed to see the difference.” His face still holding the muscular framework of a smile, but the voice touched with sarcasm. “There’s no moratorium on ambition. Not in this country. I’m talking to you about people I know who get up and make an effort for themselves. They don’t sit around bemoaning their fate and blaming others. They move. They reach. They succeed. If they’re black you casually dismiss it as a tactic of survival. Well. What about the others? The ones who do so little to help themselves? Don’t they also need to survive? I don’t know anything about your country or Africa or the conditions in Europe. But I know something about my own country. There’s always room for the man who’s determined to improve himself.”

  He paused. I said nothing, waiting for him to get on with it. Once again he’d put aside the stuffy, aloof pose and was letting the things inside him flow even though the words still came out stiff and stilted. Hell, I should try to keep him that way, just off balance. Then I’d hear the real story, straight from the depths where he kept it neatly packaged and secured.

  “A problem we face in this country is with those blacks who want everything to change overnight. Wave a wand and the pumpkin becomes a golden coach. Just like that. Have-nots into haves. No strain. No effort.”


  Looking at me for comment but getting none. Without warning the thing was in my guts again, tying them up. Something about him, his voice, something getting to me. Maybe the snide emphasis he’d put on the words when he’d said “those blacks.”

  “I believe in change,” he continued, “I believe in social evolution. I believe in the concept of equal opportunities for all. But I also believe that those opportunities must be earned. People should earn their way, whether it be an education or a job. That would ensure that they appreciate what they have. That’s the American way.”

  I was tempted to ask where all that was taking us, but thought I’d let him run on. Patience, the man said.

  “I’m a liberal,” he said, “and I hold the view that a black skin or any other skin should be no barrier to progress. But I’m against being pressured or being held to ransom.”

  “Who’s holding you to ransom?” I’m not very patient. I wanted to know what was bugging him.

  “You’re an educated man,” he went on, ignoring my question, “a highly qualified man. When one thing didn’t work for you, you tried another. I don’t suppose it was easy. Nothing important is ever easy. You say you hated the conditions. You say you even hated the people. But you worked. You earned their respect. Over here we have a different situation. People without skills or aptitudes clamoring for the better-paid jobs and professions, for the best in education and housing. Contributing nothing, but wanting everything. Making no effort to earn it. Demanding it. I’d be the first to admit that the blacks in America have had a raw deal. I can understand people wanting to change their state, improve their condition. That’s fine. And they should be helped in every way. By the government. By the state. By individuals. But I think it would be wrong to hand things over to such people just because they demand them. Changes and improvements must be earned. By sweat. By imagination. By effort. That’s been the experience of every immigrant group to this country. But these extremists want it handed to them, or they threaten to take it all.”

  Warming to it, as if it had touched something active beneath the well-groomed, controlled exterior. The rage was blossoming inside me, for out of a distant memory his words were a bitter echo. Coming out of a similar smooth pink face, under lowering English skies in an English Midlands town. Griffiths, that smooth, friendly Englishman who launched himself into the House of Commons on skids greased with similar sentiments. I wondered what far visions this one saw.

  He wasn’t funny, and yet I felt myself smiling. Not amused. Merely smiling. Not at what he said, or even the way he said it, but at him and me. At the realization that we had been circling each other, exploring each other, to reach this. We’d skirted the trifling hills and dales, skimmed the freshets and tributaries of conversation to reach this mainstream. Race. In recent years whenever I’d sat down in conversation for longer than a few moments with a white person, inevitably we’d arrive at a discussion of race.

  His voice was quiet but intense, as if he’d long known and rehearsed each word in his mind. I shifted my position to face him as frontally as the seat would permit, needing to look at him, to see him in relation to the way he spoke. The man and the words and the nuances.

  “Who are they? The extremists?” I asked.

  “Those fellows with their bushy hair and wild rhetoric. You can hardly open a newspaper or switch on the television without seeing­ or hearing them and their threats. Why the media give them so much coverage is beyond me. Some of them even carry guns. Publicly­. To show their contempt for those whose main concern is to build and create and conserve. They want to kill and destroy.”

  So controlled he was. All that intensity harnessed neatly into soft vowels and consonants. Laying it out about bushy hair and wild rhetoric. He meant blacks, of that I was sure. Saying it to me. Another black. Making it seem as though by being a stranger, I was different from the rest of the blacks, so he could tell me about them. All right, neighbor, let’s see how different I am.

  “Would you consider me an extremist?” My voice matching his in control. Again that smile on his face, bringing to it a certain wistful appeal. I wondered whether it was spontaneous or part of his cultivated client-softening repertoire.

  “Don’t be silly,” came the smiling response. “No extremist would be sitting here holding such a conversation with me. I’ve heard them. They’re demanders, threateners, not inclined to reason as you are.”

  Something about the smile was irritating the hell out of me. All he could see, all he saw were the suit and the black face; he couldn’t see the pride. All he heard were the unfamiliar accent and the familiar use of a language he could claim as his. He couldn’t hear the rage. The accent told him I was a stranger and different. But how the hell could he see me as different when the very code by which he lived stipulated that my blackness was my dominant characteristic, common to all those he’d been conditioned to despise. The readily recognizable perennial barrier between him and me. Not my intellect. Not my imagination. Not my physical strength. Not my integrity. My blackness. My ineradicable seal of kinship with all the brothers. I was trying to keep the thing inside me under control but feeling it running away with me. This son-of-a-bitch, what the hell did he know about me? Who the hell gave him the right to tell me what kind of black man I was? This same bastard who, only a short while ago, had made such a production of taking an empty seat beside me. Now his glance at me was somewhat nervous and again I could feel his retreat.

  “You think I couldn’t be an extremist because of my education? My, what you call, reasonableness? Well, I’ve news for you. In the final analysis none of that means a damned thing. Not to you. Not to whites. For as long as blacks are tractable and submissive, everything’s fine. The moment we challenge you we become extremists. The moment we give any indication of thinking and acting to promote our dignity and humanity, we disturb you. Right?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. Not at all. I am not disturbed. I am never disturbed by blacks who promote themselves and uplift themselves. As a matter of fact I am associated with several organizations and institutions designed and operating to encourage exactly that sort of thing.” Distant but controlled.

  “Designed by whom? Operated by whom? By the brothers? No. By you. Always you in the driver’s seat patronizing the hell out of us. Don’t you ever see us as able to determine our own directions? Our own conduct?”

  “What do you mean by brothers?”

  “The great international fraternity. The wretched of the earth. Blacks. Extremists.”

  “I never suggested that all black persons were extremists.” That edge again in his voice as if stresses and strains were adversely affecting his insistent, friendly pose.

  “You don’t suggest it, but you create the conditions which make it inevitable. Not merely for some. For all the brothers and sisters.” Using the term brothers deliberately to needle him. “The very nature of his life makes a brother an extremist. From birth to final breath he is forced to live in extreme circumstances.”

  “I cannot agree with that. I know several colored persons, some of them business acquaintances, colleagues, who are not extremists. In fact, they have very little sympathy with the extremists.”

  “Oh, yes, I was forgetting that you have many black friends. The ones you cannot have a personal conversation with. So how can you know what they are or what they think? Weren’t you sure I was not an extremist? What do you know of their real beliefs, their real feelings? Even about you? What do you know of such brothers apart from what they let you know of themselves? Business acquaintances, you say? Which brother can be one of your business acquaintances without having lived through the experience of rejection or discrimination at some point? Which one?”

  “I don’t think any of them would agree with you.”

  “Their disagreement with me is of no consequence. It’s worth as much as their agreement with you. They need to survive and can readily pe
rsuade themselves that the means justify their ends. But the fact remains that to be what they are, to become what they have become, required that at some point they lived through extreme terms and circumstances.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what that means.”

  The train was maintaining a smooth, stable run. He uncrossed his legs and crossed them again, still holding that sideways position as if to emphasize his relaxation and control. Fine with me.

  I went on, “Okay, I’ll explain. Think of a young brother in one of your schools. Let’s say one of your ‘integrated’ schools, because I’m discovering that integration is the big thing in your education system, the mind-boggling concept of a black child sitting and being taught beside a white child. Not learning, because that’s not your affair. Merely being taught. Academically.”

  “Surely that’s up to him,” he intervened.

  “Is it? Is it also up to a white child whether or not he learns? Anyway, never mind that. I’ll tell you what the young brother discovers, what you make absolutely sure that he discovers. If he is ever to achieve anything or amount to anything in this success-oriented society, he must do more, much more than is required of his white peer. In every area of endeavor he must prove himself extraordinary in order to achieve the ordinary. He must be outstanding even where mediocrity is the norm for whites. Whatever he does must be done, one might say, extremely. In school, in seeking or competing for employment, in housing, in everything. Inevitably, therefore, when he is able to examine critically the pressures imposed upon him, and when he resists those pressures or shows some inclination to resist those pressures, the habit of extreme effort is continued. And you suddenly become shocked at this. You don’t mind his being an extremely good athlete, an extremely capable soldier, an extremely obedient slave or servant, or an extremely demoralized welfare recipient. Why should you? That’s all part of his familiar role, acceptable to you. But the moment he becomes extremely conscious politically, or extremely active politically, you become alarmed. Only then you see him as extremist.”