ven the sweeter souls of the dominant world as they discourse
with me on weather, weal, and woe are continually playing above their
actual words an obligato of tune and tone, saying:

"My poor, un-white thing! Weep not nor rage. I know, too well, that the
curse of God lies heavy on you. Why? That is not for me to say, but be
brave! Do your work in your lowly sphere, praying the good Lord that
into heaven above, where all is love, you may, one day, be born--white!"

I do not laugh. I am quite straight-faced as I ask soberly:

"But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?" Then
always, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I am given to
understand that whiteness is the ownership of the earth forever and
ever, Amen!

Now what is the effect on a man or a nation when it comes passionately
to believe such an extraordinary dictum as this? That nations are coming
to believe it is manifest daily. Wave on wave, each with increasing
virulence, is dashing this new religion of whiteness on the shores of
our time. Its first effects are funny: the strut of the Southerner, the
arrogance of the Englishman amuck, the whoop of the hoodlum who
vicariously leads your mob. Next it appears dampening generous
enthusiasm in what we once counted glorious; to free the slave is
discovered to be tolerable only in so far as it freed his master! Do we
sense somnolent writhings in black Africa or angry groans in India or
triumphant banzais in Japan? "To your tents, O Israel!" These nations
are not white!

After the more comic manifestations and the chilling of generous
enthusiasm come subtler, darker deeds. Everything considered, the title
to the universe claimed by White Folk is faulty. It ought, at least, to
look plausible. How easy, then, by emphasis and omission to make
children believe that every great soul the world ever saw was a white
man's soul; that every great thought the world ever knew was a white
man's thought; that every great deed the world ever did was a white
man's deed; that every great dream the world ever sang was a white man's
dream. In fine, that if from the world were dropped everything that
could not fairly be attributed to White Folk, the world would, if
anything, be even greater, truer, better than now. And if all this be a
lie, is it not a lie in a great cause?

Here it is that the comedy verges to tragedy. The first minor note is
struck, all unconsciously, by those worthy souls in whom consciousnes