FROM A WHITE MAN AT HARVARD

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

To ask the white man to approach the Negro with no consciousness of color is, I believe, a great mistake. For this is an invitation, to the white man to avoid the conflicts of the racial problem altogether--an invitation which he has shown himself quite anxious to accept. The white man would very much like to believe your statement that the so-called Negro Problem has nothing to do with color. But in fact it has everything to do with color, and he cannot escape this fact. His real problem, however, is that he sees in terms of black or white, instead of in terms of black and white.

It is characteristic of most "liberal" whites, when confronted with a Negro, to assume either that the Negro is white, or that they themselves are Negro. But this attempt to circumvent the racial barrier by pretending that everyone stands on the same side can only increase the real distance between the races. As you have pointed out, while a Negro may call another Negro a nigger, for a white man to assume this liberty is disastrous. This barrier, this vital difference must be acknowledged if it is to be understood and destroyed. The problem of the "liberal" white man, therefore, is not that he is too race-conscious, but that he is not race-conscious enough.

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I do not mean to suggest that an increased emphasis on specifically "racial" thinking should be accompanied by a decreased emphasis on "individual" or non-racial human qualities. To the contrary, what the white man most desperately needs is greater personal involvement--but with a full consciousness of the extent to which race colors personality and social, interaction. The white man must become as acutely aware of his "whiteness" as the Negro is of his "Negroness." He must be made to feel as much pain, as much frustration, anger and hatred at being called an ofay as a Negro feels when he is called a nigger. And he must come to feel his alienation from Negro society as sharply as the Negro feels his isolation from white society.

If, as I believe, we are not only human beings, but white human beings and Negro human beings, we must discover what it is to be white what it is to be Negro. For only by isolating and understanding these qualities can we come to a realization of what it is to be simply human. And only then will race and color be truly insignificant. J. Mason Morfft '62-4