Page "lore" Paragraph 1088

None of this is true for the Northerner.

Negroes represent nothing to him personally, except, perhaps, the dangers of carnality.

He never sees Negroes.

Southerners see them all the time.

Northerners never think about them whereas Southerners are never really thinking of anything else.

Negroes are, therefore, ignored in the North and are under surveillance in the South, and suffer hideously in both places.

Neither the Southerner nor the Northerner is able to look on the Negro simply as a man.

It seems to be indispensable to the national self-esteem that the Negro be considered either as a kind of ward ( in which case we are told how many Negroes, comparatively, bought Cadillacs last year and how few, comparatively, were lynched ), or as a victim ( in which case we are promised that he will never vote in our assemblies or go to school with our kids ).

They are two sides of the same coin and the South will not change -- cannot change -- until the North changes.

The country will not change until it re-examines itself and discovers what it really means by freedom.

In the meantime, generations keep being born, bitterness is increased by incompetence, pride, and folly, and the world shrinks around us.