Reluctant Neighbors

  Am I a violent man? I had no intention of giving him any further answer. Perhaps he’d make his own judgment about me, just as he decided I was no extremist, because he could not know that everything in my life, everything in the life of a black man or woman, prods towards violence. Life is lived on the razor’s edge of violence, with hope and rage the counterbalancing forces. Equilibrium depending on nothing more than a word, or a glance or a small gesture. Hating the idea of violence and vainly attempting to adjust to it. Recognizing its presence within the pressures and proscriptions. Where to live? Where to work? Where to eat? Where to play? Where to be hospitalized? Where to be buried? Where to be born? Living with the rage night and day. Eating with it. Sleeping with it. Constantly aware of its growth and power. Knowing that in the eye of my rage was the seed of my own destruction. So living with it, carefully, each step an achievement of dangerous balance. Needing so little for disaster. So very little.

  My memory recreating the incident which happened a few days before Christmas, 1970, at the Audemars Piguet offices at Park Avenue in the Grand General Building. I’d gone there to collect a wristwatch which I’d handed in a month earlier for repairs. An expensive but lovely bauble, I’d bought it while serving as ambassador in Venezuela. What with diplomatic tax exemption and the special price quoted for diplomatic personnel, it seemed too good an opportunity to miss, apart from being an excellent watch. The guarantee stipulated that repairs be undertaken only by bona-fide Audemars Piguet representatives. The dial was slightly damaged and the watch also needed to be cleaned and regulated. On my earlier visit to the office I was waited on by one of their staff, a charming sister, who received the watch and advised me that within a month I’d be notified that it was ready to collect. By postcard. So there I was again.

  The same sister came to serve me, accepting the postcard and my ownership slip which she used to locate the watch from among others in a cabinet. She handed it to one of her colleagues whom I guessed was the cashier; she, in turn, made an invoice of charges and tax and called to me, “Did Mr. Braithwaite send a check?”

  That’s all it took to nudge the dormant rage into full wakefulness. Looking at her white face I read it so clearly. She had glanced at me, black me, and decided I could not own such a watch. Too expensive for the likes of me. I was the boy, the messenger sent by the owner, Mr. Braithwaite, who was, of course, white. What else? The smug, contemptuous bitch!

  “No,” I replied, barely audible with the effort of control. “He did not send it. He brought it.”

  The sister overheard this little contretemps. She looked at me and raised her shoulders in that familiar slight shrug which told me she understood and sympathized.

  Then, to her white colleague she said, “He’s Mr. Braithwaite,” in quiet tones which did not hide her contempt.

  Now should I say to this one beside me, “I am violent, but I know that violence could bring me no real satisfaction. That is my terrible dilemma. When in moments of rage I have felt like abusing someone, or when I have abused someone, it has done nothing to uplift me, to ennoble me, to satisfy me. I may say something as futile as, ‘Go to hell, you bastard,’ and when I look again you’re still there. Your cruelties, your denials, are still there like bars of steel around me. If I thought that through violence I could remove one bar, splinter it into nothingness, I’d pursue violence. If I believed that killing you would free me, I’d kill you. But I know, I surely know that killing you would only increase my helplessness.

  “You are a piece of the whole fabric of cruel encagement, and I know inside myself that if I removed you, killed you, millions more like you would spring up like dragon’s teeth all around me. And if everyone like me were to take up arms against you, you’d still proliferate. I live with my rage. But I cannot afford to kill you because of it. Not for you. Never for you. There are times, believe me, there are times when I have wanted to kill. But fortunately or unfortunately the moment passed, forcing me once again to self-examination, and I can see no virtue or value or advantage in such action.

  “I am caught between the emotional wish to give violent expression to the rage inside me and a rational appreciation that it would not help me in any way. If I took up arms and shot you, then the police came here and put me away terminally or imprisoned me, so what have I done? How have I helped myself or helped another black man? Or if as I shot you somebody was handy with a gun and shot me, how have I helped myself or how have I helped other black men? Why should we make useless sacrifices of ourselves? If I with a number of blacks; if ten of us blacks killed a hundred whites, it wouldn’t make a dent in the white oppressive forces and it would only enrage them even further. How would it help me or other blacks? Perhaps I might temporarily acquire some aura of martyrdom, myself and the other ten. So for today and tomorrow we are martyrs. But even while we are martyrs blacks are hungry, and blacks are without work, and blacks are without consideration and they’re mistreated and encaged. And can any black man take real comfort from the fact that I killed ten white men? Emotionally, yes. But how does this assuage his hunger? And how does this fortify him against the cold? Or how does this provide my children or his children with hope and encouragement in their struggle to survive?”

  But why bother to say any of it to him? He could never feel the things I feel. Could never begin to understand their deep importance to me. He might ask his questions either from the top of his head or from wherever he claimed his so-called social consciousness resides, but he’d never hear my answers. The words, yes. But never the meaning. Because he’s white, and in the fact of the color of our skins lies the depth and width of the gulf between us. Let him ask his simple-sounding questions about violence. It’s all part of his game. The white man’s game. The violence game which the white man wants the black man to play because he knows the black man will lose. Must lose. The dice are not merely loaded against him, offering an unfair bias towards losing, they’ve been designed specifically to make him a loser. He has no chance. The white man wins and must win because he’s numerically superior. He’s better equipped with violent ways and means. He’s far more expert in the technical and historical application of violence. Coldly, clinically expert. In spite of my rage and because of my impotence I must avoid the violence game. I must deny him the satisfaction of inveigling me into those threateningly defensive situations which provide him with the excuse for dispersing, imprisoning or killing me. Us.

  There he sat beside me, casually asking his insipid questions about violence. Who was it said that actions speak louder than words? Supposing, just supposing I gave him a practical answer, demonstrating beyond words the thing which right now was eating away at my entrails? What if I stood up, took this questioning neighbor by his carefully matched shirt and tie and smashed my fist against his smooth-shaven, composed face? Not with any malicious intent. Hell, no! Just to punctuate one philosophical discussion with an illustration of simple, earthy violence. Let him feel the thing he was asking about, so he could decide for himself. Christ! Wouldn’t that be something! One, just one solid fist in that well-arranged face would dispel his doubts and answer all his questions at once and forever. More than that, it certainly would wake things up.

  What would he do? Yell for help from his fellows? Shout that I’d gone mad? Would he remember that he’d asked me if I was violent? Could he ever accept that that was merely my way of answering him? Never. Anyway. What would such action prove, to him or to myself? He could casually discuss violence as if it were a ball game on the television screen and he was safely on the outside looking in. For me and others like me, violence is a state into which we are born and to which we are conditioned through the hours and days and months and years of painful survival. Could I ever explain to him that nonviolence is nothing but the debasing stamp of the abnormality of our lives? Our human spirits dictate that we be proud and noble. The conditions into which we are forced and pressured economically and socially are violent conditions.
Should I enumerate and label them for him? Should I describe for him the corrosive violence of injustice, the rabid violence of hunger, the erosive violence of disease, the debilitating violence of ignorance, the demoralizing violence of unemployment? Or would that be too philosophical for him? Maybe I should remind him of the slaver’s whip, the lyncher’s rope, the Klansman’s blazing torch, the rapings, the shootings, all the myriad expressions of the white man’s contempt. All violent.

  It is normal to respond violently to oppression. Nations have been born through violent resistance to oppression. It is despicable and abnormal to be submissive in the face of oppression. It is abnormal to be submissive in the face of pressures violently conceived and violently executed. Pressured as I am, human as I am, nonviolence is for me an abnormality. In my weakness I recognize my abnormality, so I sit quietly beside this neighbor, with my violent thoughts controlled to civility, and my violent hands clasped nonviolently in my lap.

  “Surely an intelligent man like you knows what his own philosophy is.” His voice quite edgy, intruding.

  “I know what my personal philosophy is. And it is personal.” I see.

  “Good. What about your personal philosophy? Is it violent?”

  “Personally? No. I don’t feel threatened in any way.”

  “Lucky for you.”

  “Why? Do you feel threatened?”

  “Every black feels threatened by everything around him. What we cannot control threatens us and we control nothing.”

  “Isn’t that a roundabout way of answering my earlier question? If you feel threatened you’re likely to be violent. And you say everything threatens you.”

  “Don’t try to put words into my mouth. My answer to you stands, and I still say that we are threatened by everything around us.” Keeping it conversationally cool.

  “Are you sure you don’t hate us?” Leaning forward, the smile anchored in place, the voice cool and level, making light of the question. As if he couldn’t care less whether I hated him or not. Them. In answering him I realized I was answering myself. Talking more to myself than to him.

  “No. I do not hate you.” Smiling as he was smiling. On the outside. “Maybe that’s what you would wish me to do. But I’ve given up on hate. The thing I feel most is rage. Rage, yes, at myself in my helplessness. Rage, yes, to goad myself out of occasions of despair, lest I see you for more than you are, a mere man. But hate, no. I cannot afford to hate you, because in hating you I would only succeed in further impoverishing myself without really hurting you. Long ago during my life in England I learned that you don’t really care about my hate because you look through it to my helplessness. You completely ignore my hate. Furthermore, I believe you would not hesitate to encourage my hate in order to continue my helplessness.” It was a strain talking to him. Perspiration was trickling down my armpits. “Perhaps you’re the one who hates. But I’m not sure even about that. You’re contemptuous of me, intolerant of me, but I’m not sure that you hate me. When you have lynched me in a hundred different ways, you’ve done it casually, contemptuously, secure in your position. Wherever I look I see your contempt. Even when you’re being liberal, your contempt comes shining through. You need me helpless so that you can be helpful. You need me violent, hateful and dependent so you can determine and direct my life. The moment I show any sign of thinking for myself, acting for myself, your liberalism is likely to evaporate. Like the ghost that it is.”

  I felt quite at ease, as if I’d known these things a long, long time, but vaguely, until his questions had brought them finally into focus for me. Meaningful focus.

  “Now who’s being contemptuous?” he asked. “Who’s sneering? You make the word ‘liberal’ sound dirty, shameful. Should I feel guilty of holding liberal views? Would you deny the generous help liberals have given colored people, and the support liberals have contributed to progressive laws and legislation favorable to Negro progress?” A little heated. Just a trifle I was getting under his skin for a change. Funny, he couldn’t quite decide between blacks, Negroes and colored. He used them all.

  “I do not impugn liberalism, and my remark was not directed at you, personally. We’re being general, aren’t we? I am very much in favor of liberals. We’re having a liberal conversation. Well, halfway, because in this society the liberal is white. Blacks are militant or extreme or moderate, or subservient Uncle Toms. But never liberal. So, even if only that I might understand the liberal and his viewpoint, I need you. Stay close so I can learn about you. From you.”

  “Do you really feel that way? Exactly as you state it?” he asked.

  “Exactly as I state it.”

  “You know something? I’m sure that if I had expressed the same sentiment to you about blacks, you’d see me as a racist. In yourself you call it rage. From me you’d call it racism, wouldn’t you?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Then why all the double-talk? If you hate whites, why not be honest and say so?” I could feel the anger in him. It was there, in the tight jaw, in the voice, in the fingers gripping the thin wire shank of his spectacles.

  “Because I don’t hate you. Not any more. I told you. I cannot afford it. My rage is at myself. If the day ever comes when I’m no longer helpless, I may get around to hating you. Maybe.”

  “Hate. Rage. It’s the same. I can see no difference.”

  “Can’t you? That’s a pity. Anyway, there it is. In spite of all you’ve done to us we have not yet learned to hate you. Not collectively. Sometimes some of us talk of hatred, but that’s merely rhetoric because even at such times we talk to you. If we really hated you, we’d have nothing to say to you. Absolutely nothing. Carmichael. Rap Brown. Cleaver. Malcolm X. Jackson. All the brothers spent a lot of time and energy talking to you. Belafonte, Martin Luther King, Ossie Davis, each in his own way talked to you. Have you noticed that even when we erupt into violence we suffer the greatest harm from ourselves? We burn our own homes, destroy our own property, lose our own lives. Whenever the count is taken after every explosive outburst we’re the ones who have died or are injured or imprisoned. Watts. Chattanooga. Cincinnati. Harlem. Brooklyn. Newark. Haven’t you noticed? If hate were the motivation it would seem that we hate only ourselves. Not you.”

  “I don’t see your point.”

  “I know you don’t. To date we’ve always been the victims of our own rage. Not hate. Rage. If it were truly hate we’d have long ago localized a target for its release, and you’d be the logical selection. And believe me, we’d have got through to you. You know, I am encouraged to believe that at long last we are learning.”

  “Learning what? To hate?” He sounded like a bloody broken record.

  “No. We’re learning to examine the way we feel and the ways in which we react to what we feel. We’re learning that the same emotion which caused us to burn and destroy can be re-examined and perhaps channeled to help us build and create. It is one of the main challenges we must face, how to make whatever we are and have work for us. We have been spending far too much time and energy in too many negative pursuits, the worst of which has been crying about our pain. To you. We’ve been so blind in our helplessness that we look to you for help. Isn’t that the quintessence of irony? Your contempt for us is basic to our many problems, yet we expect you to help us resolve those problems. It’s like asking the criminal to be at the same time judge and jury. Our preoccupation should be educating ourselves, teaching ourselves to be thoughtful, resourceful men. Men with pride in ourselves. Acutely conscious of our dignity. We need to believe, in ourselves. In that way we can perhaps escape the tyranny of our weakness and your exploitation of it.”

  “Does this mean separation? When you say you’ll educate yourselves, do you mean separately from whites?”

  “No. I thought I’d already answered that. I’m not talking about separate institutions. I’m talking about a new appreciation of ourselves, expressed among us, underst
ood by us, believed by us, inculcated in our children. An appreciation of our worth and our ability to direct and exploit that worth to our advantage. This would mean taking our eyes off you and focusing them beyond you. Towards infinity, so that we remove the limits, the ceilings you have placed on our endeavors, our potential. That’s why we can’t afford to hate you. It would mean making you the focus of our interests and you’re really not worth it.”

  The red appeared around his neck, moving quickly upward. I went on, “We’ve got to learn to feel pride in ourselves. Real pride in being black men. And women. A pride which springs naturally from an appreciation of our worth. We’ve got to learn to live above the myths you’ve created and fostered in us about us. The myth about our intellectual inferiority. The myth of our dependence on you.”

  He leaned backward as if for greater comfort, tilting his head upward to look beyond me towards the grimy window. There was silence between us. This is it, I thought. We’ve said it all and are back where we began, distant as ever. All the talking had done nothing for us. Hell. I didn’t even know his name.

  The train had stopped, but there was no movement among the passengers towards the exits. I leaned forward to peer through the window, but could see only an unbroken line of grimy buildings. The conductor pushed himself along the aisle with an occasional “’Scuse me, please. ’Scuse me.” Always just out of reach of questions about the unscheduled stop. Murmurs of irritation. Speculation about the cause of delay.

  “Tell me. Are you a churchman? I mean, are you religious?” my neighbor asked. Suddenly. Taking me completely by surprise. I was amazed at his persistence, at his unshatterable gall. With so much aplomb he should wind up as president. At least. What was it with him? Maybe he was determined to prove how bloody civilized he was.

  “No. I’m not religious. But why do you ask?”

  “Just something about the things you’ve been saying. Something about you … ”