PARTISAN REVIEW
71
terribly special, that to be black is
to
be
different
essentially, in the most
human terms, from the whites. We unconsciously feel that, and we justify
our feelings by appeals to theories of conditioning, of the unique nature
of their history. But I think sometimes that maybe our sense of difference
- and it is that difference in life patterns and conditions which we use
to justify their rebellion against us in our minds - is the clit stump of
our
racism.
The fire escape overlooked the railroad tracks. A
train
came by
and, when it passed by the building, so close you could reach out and
drop cement blocks on its roof, Thelma shouted, "Sit back, boy!" at
her little brother, as bottles, cans, pieces of concrete came thudding on
the
train
from the windows above. Thelma laughed. "Wait until tonight,"
she said. "Them bastards pays us back. All night whistles toot."
"What are you doing in the fall?" School was to open soon. "Are
you going back to school?"
Thelma glanced at me, raising her eyebrows. "School? Brother, I
was expelled from that school by the sisters. Parochial school. You under–
stand, Catholic? And them bitches throws me out. They hate niggers."
"Why'd they throw you out?"
"Why you think, huh? They don't have to
be
no why. Cause I was
passing out leaflets. Some of the brothers and the sisters was having meet–
ings for high school students. That what the leaflets was about. Twice
them sisters caught me. Get you black ass out of our school, they say."
"Really?" It sounded dubious to me, the "black ass" line.
Thelma glanced over at me, shaking her head. "That what they
means!"
I asked her what she thought of America. Her answer wasn't sur–
prising.
"I think it
eats,
that what I thinks. They kills the brothers, you
know
that! I mean like Pig Daley, his pigs go in guns firing into the head–
quarters. They kills us on the street, like they kills Hutton. Arrests us,
and beats us. Man, they does it to
you.
The SDS cats, they raid them
brothers
all
the time."
"How did you become a radical?" The standard questions.
"Ain't it plain? Like I grew up one, just breathing this shit, just
walking them streets, just being
black,
baby, just being lowdown and
black."
"What's in the future, what do you see ahead?"
She thought a moment, and then she said quietly, her words angry
but her voice quiet, the Southern dialect softening the bitterness in tone.
"I think we's in for more killing, like a revolution! Unless the Man ups
