As he spoke I was watching his face, the stark, bitter hatred I saw there. At first sight he had seemed nondescript in a black-dyed ex-Army greatcoat and a soft cloth cap pulled low over his eyes, hiding most of his face. But now, his eyes were narrowed and glinting, and his features pressed into a sharp vindictive mask. I could find no words to say to him, nothing strong enough, honest enough, or meaningful enough to offer against the simple rightness of his hatred.
He wanted so desperately to preserve his dignity and manhood, and at every step he was being thwarted until all he had left was his hate. I knew what the N.C. meant. NO COLOURED. And whether they realized it or not, it also meant NO CHRISTIAN, because most West Indians are very religious people. Two little letters at the end of an advertisement, and yet they could produce such cumulative bitterness. But the greatest irony lay in the fact that the Labour Exchanges are Government Offices of the Ministry of Labour, and it is inescapable that Her Majesty’s Government is either being crudely exploited to put a respectable face on these unliberal practices, or is deliberately participating in such a foul act of blatant discrimination to serve its own ends.
As if to add insult to injury, unemployment benefits are often paid in the same Labour Exchanges, which accept the fact that there is employment, and equally accept the prohibitions against the coloured person seeking employment; then pay him maintenance because he is unemployed. It seems to me that any employer who has the gall to submit such a flagrant prohibition should be made to pay maintenance to every applicant turned down because of it.
This young Negro felt that he had every reason to be bitter. What could I say to him? Could I pontificate about hate being useless and wasteful of energy? Could I say anything to him about personal responsibility which would not, in the circumstances, sound banal and false? I was on my way to a warm office, with desk and telephone and the morning cup of coffee, and respectful colleagues, and a sure salary cheque each month, and, and … What could I say to him which would give him the feeling that I really cared, and understood, and sympathized? The bus arrived at my destination and I bade him goodbye, leaving him wrapped up in his oversize coat, his pulled down cap and his misery. But I took with me a recurrent echo of his voice.
In writing it down now, I am putting it as I remember it, as I understood it. His speech was not polished or grammatical, and he used many words which, by themselves, were unfamiliar to me. But there was no mistaking the power and clarity of his meaning, the vehemence and incisiveness of his hatred. As they came out of him, forceful and elementally crude, they seemed right for the thing he felt, the only honest vehicle for the fearsome blackness growing within him. They did not defile him. I wondered if any of the many passengers on the bus would see the slim figure, or the half-veiled face, and have any suspicion of the truly frightening thing within him, for the presence of which they were all equally culpable. No, that was not quite right, we were all equally culpable, because there was no easing off my part of the blame. I, too, had a responsibility for the loathsome indignity under which this young man and others like him were being casually crushed each day, and my responsibility was the greater because I knew, at first-hand experience, what it was like.
I had reached the point, so far, of convincing myself that I had put every vestige of bitterness and racial hatred behind me, yet now, after little more than two minutes with a complete stranger, I felt it again inside me, clamouring for attention. He was black and so was I, and I experienced an immediate identity with him and his hurts, because I knew that to most of the other passengers, and equally, to most other Britons, he and I were equally two black faces, indistinguishable, despised, rejected and ignored. And if I went along to the Labour Exchange, I would be treated to the same exposure. N.C.
Holy Christ! And people talk of peace. And they talk of freedom. Freedom from what? and for what? In my heart I wanted to be free of bitterness and hatred and spite towards anyone, irrespective of his ethnic markings. But how could I ever be free when all around me was evidence of the enchainment of myself? If he suffers, then I also suffer; if he is spat on, then I am also spat on, and my fancy suit, and shiny shoes, and comfortable home will not make any of it easier to bear. And if he could hate so deeply and completely, then God help me, I had better watch myself day and night, hour by hour, lest I give way to what must be just as surely fermenting in me. Was this what the colleagues meant whenever they said, “your people … ”? Could they see, beyond the dark skins, the other identities?
At the office I prepared my report on Roddy Williams, detailing my visits to all the people concerned in the case, and adding my own recommendations. I stressed the facts that the boy was born in Britain, knew no other language or associations, and had spent all his life with white persons. It therefore seemed most natural to me that I should try to place him with a white family, as there were so very many common factors already established. To this report I added the completed application form from the Rosenbergs, commenting on my own knowledge of them and my opinion as to their suitability as foster-parents. I placed all this in the case folder and sent it to the Supervisor.
Most of the morning was spent on preparing reports on visits; in the afternoon I would be beginning on another of my tough cases. When I returned from lunch there was a note on my desk asking me to see the Supervisor at 2 p.m. that afternoon. She greeted me with a charming smile and, sitting down, I noticed that she had been reading the Williams case.
“I see you’ve been getting on with the Williams file,” she remarked. Although I had put it all down in the file, I nevertheless gave her a quick résumé of my activities.
“Do you know the Rosenbergs very well?”
“Yes,” I replied, “they are friends of mine.”
“I should think they are quite well off and very intelligent,” she observed. I waited to see where it would lead. “I’m sure you have studied the boy’s background very carefully.”
“Oh, yes,” I replied. “I’ve also checked in every way I could.”
“Mr Braithwaite, in view of this child’s background, I do not think that sort of home would be quite suitable for him. It seems to me that we should try to find him a home where the intellectual atmosphere would be, shall we say, less demanding.”
When I finally found my voice, I said: “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand you, Miss Wren.”
“I’m thinking about the boy’s mother and father,” she continued, with cool imperturbability. “It would be unwise of us to ignore the important effects of heredity in these matters.”
She was talking about a boy not yet five years old, whom all who knew him described as intelligent. He had never lived with his parents, and knew neither of them. But the whore-Mexican tag seemed to have dug really deep. I, too, remembered it, but I wanted to fight against it.
“I don’t believe any of that as applied to this boy,” I said, somewhat heatedly. “I’ve seen him. And I know the Rosenbergs. The atmosphere does not disturb their child and it won’t disturb Roddy. They are intelligent people and kind with it. In that sort of atmosphere the boy would have a real chance to develop, and they’d encourage him. I can’t see why his unfortunate first choice of parents should be held against him.”
“I’m not holding anything against him, I’m merely facing the facts. In this work we cannot afford mistakes which will have disastrous effects on the lives of the children whom it is our business to help and protect.”
“But would it have mattered if his mother had been a princess and his father a bank president?” I asked angrily.
“It might,” she replied. “Your tendency to ignore these important things and your inclination to dismiss them as trivial may be due to your lack of formal training in this field. Frankly speaking, your concern for these children is no greater than mine, than ours.”
“And frankly speaking,” I replied, seizing on this opening, “I think that it is. The idea that the pri
nceling brought up in the gamekeeper’s hut nevertheless behaves in a princely way belongs to the realm of fairy tales; similarly, the veiled suggestions and hints that this child has bad blood which must necessarily out. Maybe my lack, as you call it, of formal training helps me to concern myself more with doing than with finding reasons why things should not or could not be done. I have seen this child, and I think he is right for this family.”
I must hand it to her. Not by a flicker of an eyelash did she indicate impatience, or anger, or anything. I’m sure she didn’t learn that at the place where she received the oft-praised formal training. This came from a long history of being superior and refusing to be controlled by a situation.
“About these friends of yours,” she gave the ‘friends’ heavy inflexion. “I see they are Jewish.”
“Yes,” I replied.
“That’s unfortunate,” she said. “We would be sure to run into a lot of difficulty from Jewish adoption organizations on that score. Apart from that, it might be very unwise to put the boy in a Jewish home and the different religious circumstances which go with it.”
I could only look at her in wonderment. Wasn’t the fact of their willingness to give the child a home sufficiently important to stimulate any enthusiasm in her? They had not let their Jewishness or his Gentileness enter into their thinking, so why should we?
“Miss Wren, little Roddy hasn’t any religion, or if he has nobody has yet mentioned it, besides nobody has mentioned whether or not his mother is Jewish or Gentile, probably because her being a prostitute was sufficiently damning. Even his father might be Jewish; there are Jews in Mexico too, I suppose. But all this is, to me, very much like red herrings—rotten red herrings which will not help this child one tiny bit. This case was turned over to me because nobody was making progress with it. Luckily I’ve found somewhere for him, or I think I have. Don’t you want the boy to get out of that Institution? Or do you think that a white home is too good for him?” I had forgotten to be careful and polite.
“It’s not just this child, Mr Braithwaite. It’s all of them. In this work we must be careful to avoid any criticism which would hurt not just one case, but the whole department.” She pressed a little white button on her desk, then continued: “We cannot rush headlong into these matters, and after you have been with the Department a while longer you will understand the justice of our system.”
There was a discreet knock on the door and it opened. She came into the room, a large, greying, comfortable person. That was the word which always came into my mind whenever I saw the Deputy Chief. Comfortable. It would not be difficult to imagine her seated in a large armchair by a roaring fire, surrounded by a whole regiment of sons and daughters and grandchildren. She always moved gracefully, as if accustomed to doing the right thing in the right way. Her face was round and pleasant, but the pale blue eyes were steady and suggested prudent strength.
“Oh, do come in, Miss Whitney,” the Chief said. “Mr Braithwaite and I have been discussing the case of the little Williams boy.”
Miss Whitney smiled and nodded, but said nothing. Evidently she knew all about it and had come in to reinforce the Chief’s position. Well, she didn’t need to. If they wanted the kid to stay in the Home, that was up to them.
“I’ve been explaining to him the difficulties which we can expect to crop up from the fact that the persons he has recommended as foster-parents are Jewish, but I think he is inclined to be somewhat impatient with me.”
“True,” Miss Whitney agreed, “we’ll have to be ready to meet quite a few objections from various quarters, but I think you can say it won’t be the first time.” She smiled.
I started. It sounded as if they were for the idea, not against it. I stared at them, and said to Miss Wren: “But I thought you were against this whole thing?”
“Not against it; oh, no. I’m very pleased that you have been able to find a possible family so quickly. But I must make sure that you understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. I wanted to find out whether your interest in the case was merely sentimental because the child is coloured.”
“For these children who have spent all their lives in a public institution,” Miss Whitney intervened, “we try to ensure that every possible eventuality is covered before the move instead of risking a breakdown and the resultant unhappiness to the child.”
I nodded in agreement.
“One thing I must tell you,” Miss Wren said. “Because the Rosenbergs are personal friends of yours, some other Welfare Officer will have to take over the case from this point. That’s to make sure that the relationship between the Welfare Officer and the prospective family is not so intimate as to destroy his objectivity. This in no way reflects adversely on you, it is merely a matter of policy, and I’m sure you will accept it in that light. I think the best thing for me to do is get in touch with the Area Office nearest to where the Rosenbergs live and have someone from there get in touch with the Rosenbergs. You will, however, be kept informed on developments.”
I left her office feeling rather relieved, but still a little bothered by an indefinable something in our relationship which seemed to set us so easily in opposition to each other. Maybe it was me, impatient in my enthusiasm to get on with the job, and irritated by her casual aloofness, especially when I thought I was breaking all kinds of new ground. Back at my desk I sat for a while trying to let the residual irritations pass from me. The office was very quiet.
I settled down to read through the pile of case folders on my desk; a selection of tough cases. They all involved coloured children and their parents, (if any) and had come in from several districts. Part of my job was to break these hard cases wherever possible. It was supposed, (and at first I shared this view) that, being a Negro, I would be able to take a fresh view of each case and from the many points of identity between myself and other coloured persons discover some factor which would prove to be the necessary ‘open sesame’. After some months on the job I had learnt that whenever I was successful in helping to resolve a certain situation, it was not because of the colour of my skin, because I was quickly learning that persons in trouble, no matter what their race or religion, react favourably to a courteous, helpful and really sympathetic approach which respects their dignity while seeking to serve them. I had, in fact, to learn to be colour blind while learning how to serve.
These case sheets made interesting reading; they related to boys and girls all living in Children’s Homes and cared for by the Council, their ages ranging from about two to thirteen years. Most of them had been completely abandoned, the others had one or more parents who showed occasional interest in them, but for some reason did not, or could not, remove them from the Home. I chuckled rather audibly as I noticed the way in which reference to the children’s origin varied as each Welfare Officer tied her own label to her own case.
Coloured
Black
Negroid
Half-African
Half-Indian
Anglo-Indian
Half-West Indian
Half-Negro
Half-Asian
Odd how the emphasis was always on the child’s blackness. Maybe one of these days I will see the term Half-White. Could be that will mean something.
“What’s amusing you, Braithwaite?”
Jim Baxter must have noticed me grinning to myself. He was one of the five male Welfare Officers in a staff of sixteen. He and I shared the same office with seven female officers, and, not accidentally, our desks were next to each other. Jim had been a Welfare Officer for about six years. Short and slim, with a round boyish face, he knew the book of rules backwards and never took a single step unless he was quite sure of all the precedents. He could quote chapter and verse of Council regulations at the drop of a hat and was fond of using all kinds of bits of technical terms. He knew all the different types of neuroses by name, and a
fter he had interviewed an applicant, would neatly fit him or her into the appropriate neurotic pigeonhole. He never said ‘child’ if he could say ‘sibling’. Jim said he understood the common man because he got his Diploma in Sociology the hard way, night school after a long day’s work. Jim said he entertained no colour prejudice because one of his best friends was a Negro. Not me, some other fortunate fellow. Jim said that the British Government should undertake a lot of major work projects in the West Indies, and other overseas territories; then the immigrants would all return home and there would be no colour problem in Britain. Jim was very knowledgeable.
“Something in these files amuses me,” I replied, “the way a child is a child, except when he is not a white child.”
“Come again.” He twisted his face into an expression of mock alarm. “Say that piece of double-Dutch again.”
“I’m reading these files, and the children are all half something or other; the white children I deal with are only Tom Brown or Judy White. But these others are all labelled ‘Paul Green, half-African’ or ‘Mary Blue, half-West Indian’. Do you know, this tells me as much about the Welfare Officers as it does about the children.”
“How’s that?”
“I think these terms indicate that we ourselves are too obsessed with the colour of these children and that may be part of the reason why these cases are still hanging fire. All these children need foster-parents or adoptive parents, but I have the idea that this labelling of them sets up a kind of blockage in the minds of the Welfare Officers which subconsciously inhibits our efforts on the child’s behalf.”