“Guess there ain’t much more to say. Makes me mad to discuss it anyhow.”
“No need of getting mad at people like that,” said Tony Crews simply and softly. “I think one should laugh at such stupidity.”
“And ridicule it, too,” came from the luxurious person sprawled over the floor, for he did impress Emma Lou as being luxurious, despite the fact that his suit was unpressed, and that he wore neither socks nor necktie. She noticed the many graceful gestures he made with his hands, but wondered why he kept twisting his lips to one side when he talked. Perhaps he was trying to mask the size of his mouth.
Truman was speaking now, “Ridicule will do no good, nor mere laughing at them. I admit those weapons are about the only ones an intelligent person would use, but one must also admit that they are rather futile.”
“Why futile?” Paul queried indolently.
“They are futile,” Truman continued, “because, well, those people cannot help being like they are—their environment has made them that way.”
Miss Thurston muttered something. It sounded like “hooey,” then held out an empty glass. “Give me some more firewater, Alva.” Alva hastened across the room and refilled her glass. Emma Lou wondered what they were talking about. Again Cora broke the silence, “You can’t tell me they can’t help it. They kick about white people, then commit the same crime.”
There was a knock on the door, interrupting something Tony Crews was about to say. Alva went to the door.
“Hello, Ray.” A tall, blond, fair-skinned youth entered. Emma Lou gasped, and was more bewildered than ever. All of this silly talk and drinking, and now—here was a white man!
“Hy, everybody. Jusas Chraust, I hope you saved me some liquor.” Tony Crews held out his empty glass and said quietly, “We’ve had about umpteen already, so I doubt if there’s any more left.”
“You can’t kid me, bo. I know Alva would save me a dram or two.” Having taken off his hat and coat he squatted down on the floor beside Paul.
Truman turned to Emma Lou. “Oh, Ray, meet Miss Morgan. Mr. Jorgenson, Miss Morgan.”
“Glad to know you; pardon my not getting up, won’t you?” Emma Lou didn’t know what to say, and couldn’t think of anything appropriate, but since he was smiling, she tried to smile too, and nodded her head.
“What’s the big powwow?” he asked. “All of you look so serious. Haven’t you had enough liquor, or are you just trying to settle the ills of the universe?”
“Neither,” said Paul. “They’re just damning our ‘pink niggers.’ ”
Emma Lou was aghast. Such extraordinary people—saying “nigger” in front of a white man! Didn’t they have any race pride or proper bringing up? Didn’t they have any common sense?
“What’ve they done now?” Ray asked, reaching out to accept the glass Alva was handing him.
“No more than they’ve always done,” Tony Crews answered. “Cora here just felt like being indignant, because she heard of a forthcoming wedding in Brooklyn to which the prospective bride and groom have announced they will not invite any dark people.”
“Seriously now,” Truman began. Ray interrupted him.
“Who in the hell wants to be serious?”
“As I was saying,” Truman continued, “you can’t blame light Negroes for being prejudiced against dark ones. All of you know that white is the symbol of everything pure and good, whether that everything be concrete or abstract. Ivory Soap is advertised as being ninety-nine and some fraction percent pure, and Ivory Soap is white. Moreover, virtue and virginity are always represented as being clothed in white garments. Then, too, the God we, or rather most Negroes worship is a patriarchal white man, seated on a white throne, in a spotless white Heaven, radiant with white streets and white-apparelled angels eating white honey and drinking white milk.”
“Listen to the boy rave. Give him another drink,” Ray shouted, but Truman ignored him and went on, becoming more and more animated.
“We are all living in a totally white world, where all standards are the standards of the white man, and where almost invariably what the white man does is right, and what the black man does is wrong, unless it is precedented by something a white man has done.”
“Which,” Cora added scornfully, “makes it all right for light Negroes to discriminate against dark ones?”
“Not at all,” Truman objected. “It merely explains, not justifies, the evil—or rather, the fact of intra-racial segregation. Mulattoes have always been accorded more consideration by white people than their darker brethren. They were made to feel superior even during slave days … made to feel proud, as Bud Fisher would say, that they were bastards. It was for the mulatto offspring of white masters and Negro slaves that the first schools for Negroes were organized, and say what you will, it is generally the Negro with a quantity of mixed blood in his veins who finds adaptation to a Nordic environment more easy than one of pure blood, which, of course, you will admit, is, to an American Negro, convenient if not virtuous.”
“Does that justify their snobbishness and self-evaluated superiority?”
“No, Cora, it doesn’t,” returned Truman. “I’m not trying to excuse them. I’m merely trying to give what I believe to be an explanation of this thing. I have never been to Washington and only know what Paul and you have told me about conditions there, but they seem to be just about the same as conditions in Los Angeles, Omaha, Chicago, and other cities in which I have lived or visited. You see, people have to feel superior to something, and there is scant satisfaction in feeling superior to domestic animals or steel machines that one can train or utilize. It is much more pleasing to pick out some individual or some group of individuals on the same plane to feel superior to. This is almost necessary when one is a member of a supposedly despised, mistreated minority group. Then consider that the mulatto is much nearer
