A MAN AT HARVARD

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I am a young black man, searching for satisfying orientation and meaningful identification. . . .

--but I'm not a young (black) man. I'm a nigger. Nobody around here calls me that. If they did, I would have something. I could feel offended and get mad. Last night I was at dinner. A couple of nice guys got up and left the table, talking about the swell party "about 8." I sat there finishing my coffee. I'm a nigger.

White men worry about their daughters and their wives (and themselves) walking through Harlem. That's their "Negro problem." And they're right to worry. I worry about myself and my girl--there and on the South Side and in Roxbury. The "liberal" white man worries, abstractly, about certain phrases. He worries about "equality of education, of housing." He worries about desegregation in some far off place. All this sounds good. But I wish he would wonder what "Negro-ness" is like in the system. My own experience with "life" has made me real sensitive to him. If I don't trust him, personally, like a buddy any offense strikes me as a racial slight. When he pushes me aside to get a seat on the train, I think he pushes me because I'm a nigger. I wish he'd ask himself, then, how I must feel, and care about his own reply, and quit pushing, in any way, forever. But a man never thinks about those important things; until later, when he's too far away from the incident to beg my pardon and mean it. I would beg his pardon. That's what his fathers taught their niggers. That's the way mutually respectful, self-respecting men ought to act. But in America men just don't extend themselves to be human. It's the system again. It's why Negroes call each other "nigger," but a white man had better not. Liberals don't understand--won't understand. I'm a nigger. You know what that means.

And, after four years of sweating Harvard sweat, it will still mean the same thing. Of course, when I pin my diploma on my shirt, the white world won't act like it doesn't respect me. I'll still be "the nigger" but, when I show my trophy, the world will bend to necessity. It's so funny. There'll be no real necessity--just habit. I might even, some day, become Ralph Bunche or, in forty years, Bobby Kennedy. But then, I'll still be nigger to the man on the train. Yes, it's funny, pathetically funny on Commencement night, after the exercises, when I climb back onto the MTA and ride back into the ghetto, I'll still be nigger to the man across the aisle. And the liberals still won't understand. They'll still be submerged in their "Negro problem," not realizing that the habit of seeing me--saying Negro--and hearing, way down deep, NIGGER--instead of hearing, HERE IS A MAN--that habit will be drowning us all. --Name Withheld on Request