MANY THOUSANDS GONE
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him, as a child; nevertheless, the hand and the darkness remain
with
him,
indivisible from himself forever, part of the passion that
drives him wherever he thinks to take flight.
The making of an American begins at that point where he
himself rejects all other ties, any other history; and himself adopts
the vesture of his adopted land.
This
problem has been faced by
all
Americans throughout our history-in a way it
is
our history–
and it baffles the immigrant and sets on edge the second generation
until today. In the case of the Negro the past was taken from
him
whether he would or no; yet to forswear it was meaningless and
availed
him
nothing, since his shameful history was carried, quite
literally, on his brow. Shameful; for he was heathen as well as black
and would never have discovered the healing blood of Christ had
not we braved the jungles to bring him these glad tidings. Shame–
ful; for, since our role as missionary had not been wholly disinter–
ested, it was necessary to recall the shame from which we had deliv–
ered him in order more easily to escape our own.
As
he accepted the
alabaster Christ and the bloody cross-in the bearing of which he
would find his redemption, as, indeed, to our outraged astonish–
ment, he sometimes did-he must, henceforth, accept that image
we then gave him of himself: having no other and standing, more–
over, in danger of death should he fail to accept the dazzling light
thus brought into such darkness. It is this quite simple dilemma that
must be borne in mind if we wish to comprehend his psychology.
However we shift the light which beats so fiercely on his head, or
prove,
by victorious social analysis, how his lot has changed, how we
have both improved, our uneasiness refuses to be exorcized. And
nowhere is this more apparent than in our literature on the subject–
'problem' literature when written by whites, 'protest' literature when
written by Negroes--and nothing is more striking than the tremen–
dous disparity of tone between the two creations.
Kingsblood Royal
bears, for example, almost no kinship to
If He Hollers Let Him Go,
though the same reviewers praised them both for what were, at
bottom, very much the same reasons. These reasons may
be
sug–
gested, far too briefly but not at all unjustly, by observing that the
presupposition is in both novels exactly the same: black is a terrible
color with which to
be
born into the world.
