PARTISAN REVIEW
73
certainly the best of them, the most thoughtful and gifted, the sensitive
and public spirited elements of the generation will join Thelma and
Hank and Anne on the ramparts. Never to come back. For there is mO<Te
that unites the generation than divides it, it
is
as simple as that. Class
and
racial divisions won't anymore keep the young and radical divided
and
therefore in check. That has passed, too.
The radical movement in the high schools has grown with incredible
speed. Most persons active in radical circles agree that the battlefield has
moved from the colleges to the high schools, factories and army camps.
A large minority of the new teen-age generation is unassimilatable into
American (straight) culture as it
is
presently constituted. They cannot
be bought. They've crossed over and they won't return.
I asked Thelma where she thought she would be in five years.
"Dead," she replied.
"You don't think you might sell-out, change, maybe reform will
come and things will be made right?"
"Goddamn, where you been?
It
don't make no difference. I ain't
got
nothing
to lose. A revolution could only help me. What could it
take from me the Man ain't already took? My life? That belong to the
brothers and the sisters, to my people."
"But what if you had something to lose?"
"It still don't make no difference. We wants justice. You under–
stand? Justice. We don't care what they
will
do, we want the Man to
pay for what he
done.
Three hundred years of bad times got to be paid
for, baby, somebody got to pay. That somebody is the honkey Man, that
who that somebody is. Yes, sir, that who he is."
