The Misfortune Of The Man

I Want The World To Recognize With Me The Open Door Of Every Consciousness

Collective Guilt Is Borne By What Is Conventionally Called The Scapegoat. Now The Scapegoat For White Society - Which Is Based On Myths Of Progress, Civilization, Liberalism, Education, Enlightenment, Refinement - Will Be Precisely The Force That Opposes The Expansion And The Triumph Of These Myths. This Brutal Opposing Force Is Supplied By The Negro.

Fervor Is The Weapon Of Choice For The Impotent.

What I Call Middle-class Society Is Any Society That Becomes Rigidified In Predetermined Forms, Forbidding All Evolution, All Gains, All Progress, All Discovery. I Call Middle-class A Closed Society In Which Life Has No Taste, In Which The Air Is Tainted, In Which Ideas And Men Are Corrupt. And I Think That A Man Who Takes A Stand Against This Death Is In A Sense A Revolutionary.

I Am Black; I Am In Total Fusion With The World, In Sympathetic Affinity With The Earth, Losing My Id In The Heart Of The Cosmos -- And The White Man, However Intelligent He May Be, Is Incapable Of Understanding Louis Armstrong Or Songs From The Congo. I Am Black, Not Because Of A Curse, But Because My Skin Has Been Able To Capture All The Cosmic Effluvia. I Am Truly A Drop Of Sun Under The Earth.