They say we’re striking today,
and yesterday, and the day before that, and tomorrow.
To eradicate racism, to create ethnic pride.
To bring everybody together into the framework.
Just when the rest of us are trying to
escape from it.
I’m damned if I can figure it out,
I want a Third World College, I don’t like police on campus, but I like getting my head bashed in even less.
Manuel, can I talk to you, or to you, proud natural Black African, or to you, the little guy with the straight black hair and the funny eyes?
I was told you were all Americans just like me.
But some people don’t think that way, so you haven’t made it.
You have tried to, but just lost something along the way, didn’t you?
So here you are halfway there.
But you lost your identify, the one thing you were sure of, while you were trying to make it.
The funny thing is it may not even be worth the trouble. I am not overwhelmed with joy because I am a WASP.
Already there baby, in this land of pseudo opportunity,
but then I guess I never had to live in a ghetto or in the back of a truck while my parents packed grapes and tomatoes, and I guess that might be the difference.
So we've run out of alternatives, all you people who used to clean the ashtrays, cook the food, and take care of the babies so well. Have we, have we really?
I mean after all, if it was good enough for your parents. Why isn’t it good enough for you? The trouble
with you people, yes you people, you’ve always been “you people” as opposed to us.
The trouble with you people, I am afraid, is us.
And we are both starting to realize it, we, quite reluctantly, and you, quite passionately; in a way that scares
us.
My God you mean black skin and curly hair and talking Spanish and yellow skin and slanty eyes are beautiful.
Why didn’t some body tell me, and I could’ve bought the concession?
Jeez, I bet we could have cornered the market.
Except, I guess we sort of did have that corner when we brought you over as slaves to Virginia in 1619.
Yes, sir America, land of opportunity. You’ll love it.
If you can live through it.
So we’re the problem, not you, is that it?
And history is against us, you say. Sooner or later, baby, dead or alive – me or you?
But you must remember the tremendous alienation that the white liberal student faces in society, oh yes.
Brought up to worry about nothing, school paid for, that’s what I call alienation. It doesn’t really hold a candle
to yours, does it?
So you say shut it down, sooner or
later, it’s inevitable, I bet people in an earlier revolution in this country (except it wasn’t really a revolution
I’m told) heard the same stuff. And they had to decide,
They turned militant, didn’t they, even went to
guerrilla warfare. Shocking. And I bet there were people like me, sitting, and wondering idly what to do.
And if they joined, their cause was just, and if they didn’t, they were lucky anyway.
But things are all different now. We’re richest in the world; how could a revolutionary situation exist here?
Maybe in some of those Third World countries, but not here.
Well – yes, here. It’s coming, you must understand that.Your decision is whether it will be sooner, at a relatively low price, Or later, at a price nobody wants to think about.
David Hemphill
Sophomore, Poli. Science.