To Begin Is No More

... If Your Heart And Your Honest Body Can Be Controlled By The State, Or Controlled By Community Taboo, Are You Not Then, And In That Case, No More Than A Slave Ruled By Outside Force? What Tyranny Could Exceed A Tyranny That Dictates To The Human Heart, And That Attempts To Dictate The Public Career Of An Honest Human Body?

In America, The Traditional Routes To Black Identity Have Hardly Been Normal. Suicide (disappearance By Imitation, Or Willed Extinction), Violence (hysterical Religiosity, Crime, Armed Revolt), And Exemplary Moral Courage; None Of These Is Normal.

South Africa Used To Seem So Far Away. Then It Came Home To Me. It Began To Signify The Meaning Of White Hatred Here. That Was What The Sheets And The Suits And The Ties Covered Up, Not Very Well. That Was What The Cowardly Guys Calling Me Names From Their Speeding Truck Wanted To Happen To Me, To All Of Me: To My People. That Was What Would Happen To Me If I Walked Around The Corner Into The Wrong Neighborhood. That Was Birmingham. That Was Brooklyn. That Was Reagan. That Was The End Of Reason. South Africa Was How I Came To Understand That I Am Not Against War; I Am Against Losing The War.

Let Me Just Say, At Once: I Am Not Now Nor Have I Ever Been A White Man. And, Leaving Aside The Joys Of Unearned Privilege, This Leaves Me Feeling Pretty Good.

I Am Not Wrong: Wrong Is Not My Name