Black Like Me (13 page)

“No, sir,” I sighed.

“You’re lying in your teeth and you know it.”

Silence. Soon after, almost abruptly he halted the car and said: “Okay, this is as far as I go.” He spoke as though he resented my uncooperative attitude, my refusal to give him this strange verbal sexual pleasure.

I thanked him for the ride and stepped down onto the highway. He drove on in the same direction.

Soon another picked me up, a young man in his late twenties who spoke with an educated flair. His questions had the spurious elevation of a scholar seeking information, but the information he sought was entirely sexual, and presupposed that in the ghetto the Negro’s life is one of marathon sex with many different partners, open to the view of all; in a word, that marital fidelity and sex as love’s goal of union with the beloved object were exclusively the white man’s property. Though he pretended to be above such ideas as racial superiority and spoke with genuine warmth, the entire context of his talk reeked of preconceived ideas to the contrary.

“I understand Negroes are much more broad-minded about such things,” he said warmly.

“I don’t know.”

“I understand you make more of an art - or maybe a
hobby
- out of your sex than we do.”

“I doubt it.”

“Well, you people don’t seem to have the inhibitions we have. We’re all basically puritans. I understand Negroes do a lot more things - different kinds of sex - than we do. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I admire your attitude, think it’s basically healthier than ours. You don’t get so damned many conflicts. Negroes don’t have much neuroses, do they? I mean you people have a more realistic tradition about sex - you’re not so sheltered from it as we are.”

I knew that what he really meant was that Negroes grew
up seeing it from infancy. He had read the same stories, the same reports of social workers about parents sharing a room with children, the father coming home drunk and forcing the mother onto the bed in full view of the young ones. I felt like laughing in his face when I thought of the Negro families I had known already as a Negro: the men on the streets, in the ghettos, the housewives and their great concern that their children “grow up right.”

“You people regard sex as a
total
experience - and that’s how it should be. Anything that makes you feel good is morally all right for you. Isn’t that the main difference?

“I don’t think there’s any difference,” I said cautiously, not wanting to test the possibility of his wrath at having a Negro disagree with him.

“You
don’t
?” His voice betrayed excitement and eagerness, gave no hint of offense.

“Our ministers preach sin and hell just as much as yours,” I said. “We’ve got the same puritanical background as you. We worry just as much as white people about our children losing their virginity or being perverted. We’ve got the same miserable little worries and problems over our sexual effectiveness, the same guilts that you have.”

He appeared astonished and delighted, not at what I said but at the fact that I could say it. His whole attitude of enthusiasm practically shouted, “Why, you talk
intelligently
!” He was so obtuse he did not realize the implied insult in his astonishment that a black man could do anything but say “yes, sir” and mumble four-letter words.

Again, he asked questions scarcely different from those that white men would ask themselves, especially scholars who would discuss cultural differences on a detached plane. Ye t here the tone was subtly conniving. He went through the motions of courteous research, but he could not hide his real preoccupation. He asked about the size of Negro genitalia and the details of Negro sex life. Only the language differed from the previous inquirers - the substance was the same. The difference was that here I could disagree with him without risking a flood of abuse or petulance. He quoted Kinsey and others. It became apparent he was one of those young
men who possess an impressive store of facts, but no truths. This again would have no significance and would be unworthy of note except for one thing: I have talked with such men many times as a white and they never show the glow of prurience he revealed. The significance lay in the fact that my blackness and his concepts of what my blackness implied allowed him to expose himself in this manner. He saw the Negro as a different species. He saw me as something akin to an animal in that he felt no need to maintain his sense of human dignity, though certainly he would have denied this.

I told myself that I was tired, that I must not judge these men who picked me up and for the price of a ride submitted me to the swamps of their fantasy lives. They showed me something that all men have but seldom bring to the surface, since most men seek health. The boy ended up wanting me to expose myself to him, saying he had never seen a Negro naked. I turned mute, indrawn, giving no answer. The silence rattled between us and I felt sorry for the reprimand that grew from me to him in the silence. I did not want this cruelty to him, since I knew that he showed me a side of his nature that was special to the night and the situation, a side rarely brought to light in his everyday living. I stared at the dimly lighted car dashboard and saw him attending an aunt’s funeral, having Sunday dinner with his parents, doing some kindness for a friend - for he was kind. How would I let him see that I understood and that I still respected him, and that I formed no judgment against him for this momentary slip? For instead of seeing it as a manifestation of some poor human charity, he might view it as confirmation that Negroes are insensitive to sexual aberration, that they think nothing of it - and this would carry on the legend that has so handicapped the Negro.

“I wasn’t going to do anything to you,” he said in a voice lifeless with humiliation. “I’m not queer or anything.”

“Of course not,” I said. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s just that I don’t get a chance to talk to educated Negroes - people that can answer questions.”

“You make it more complicated than it is,” I said. “If you want to know about the sexual morals of the Negro - his practices
and ideals - it’s no mystery. These are human matters, and the Negro is the same human as the white man. Just ask yourself how it is for a white man and you’ll know all the answers. Negro trash is the same as white trash. Negro decency is about the same, too.

“But there are differences. The social studies I’ve read …”

“They don’t deal with any basic difference in human nature between black and white,” I said. “They only study the effects of environment on human nature. You place the white man in the ghetto, deprive him of educational advantages, arrange it so he has to struggle hard to fulfill his instinct for self-respect, give him little physical privacy and less leisure, and he would after a time assume the same characteristics you attach to the Negro. These characteristics don’t spring from whiteness or blackness, but from a man’s conditioning.”

“Yes, but Negroes have more illegitimate children, earlier loss of virginity and more crime - these are established facts,” he insisted without unkindness.

“The fact that the white race has the same problems proves these are not Negro characteristics, but the product of our condition as men,” I said. “When you force humans into a subhuman mode of existence, this always happens. Deprive a man of any contact with the pleasures of the spirit and he’ll fall completely into those of the flesh.”

“But we don’t deprive you people of the ‘pleasures of the spirit,’ ” he said.

“In most places we can’t go to the concerts, the theater, the museums, public lectures … or even to the library. Our schools in the South don’t compare to the white schools, poor as they are. You deprive a man of educational opportunities and he’ll have no knowledge of the great civilizing influences of art, history, literature and philosophy. Many Negroes don’t even know these things exist. With practically nothing to exalt the mind or exercise the spirit, any man is going to sink to his lowest depths. It becomes vicious - and tragic.”

“I can’t imagine how it must be,” he said. “I don’t think it’s fair. But just the same, plenty of whites don’t have access to these things - to art, history, literature and philosophy. Some of the
finest people I know live in the country where they never get to museums, concerts.”

“Living in the country, they are surrounded by natural museums and concerts,” I said. “Besides, those doors are always open to them. The Negro, too, fares better in the country. But most are deprived of education. Ignorance keeps them poor, and when a town-dwelling Negro is poor, he lives in the ghetto. His wife has to work usually, and this leaves the children without parental companionship. In such places, where all of man’s time is spent just surviving, he rarely knows what it means to read a great book. He has grown up and now sees his children grow up in squalor. His wife usually earns more than he. He is thwarted in his need to be father-of-the-household. When he looks at his children and his home, he feels the guilt of not having given them something better. His only salvation is not to give a damn finally, or else he will fall into despair. In despair a man’s sense of virtue is dulled. He no longer cares. He will do anything to escape it - steal or commit acts of violence - or perhaps try to lose himself in sensuality. Most often the sex-king is just a poor devil trying to prove the manhood that his whole existence denies. This is what the whites call the ‘sorry nigger.’ Soon he will either desert his home or become so unbearable he is kicked out. This leaves the mother to support the children alone. To keep food in their bellies, she has to spend most of her time away from them, working. This leaves the children in the streets, prey to any sight, any conversation, any sexual experiment that comes along to make their lives more interesting or pleasurable. To a young girl who has nothing, has never known anything, the baubles she can get - both in a kind of crude affection and in gifts or money - by granting sex to a man or boy appeal to her as toys to a child. She gets pregnant sometimes and then the vicious cycle is given impetus. In some instances the mother cannot make enough to support the children, so she sells her sex for what she can get. This gets easier and easier until she comes up with still another child to abort or support. But none of this is ‘Negro-ness.’ ”

“I don’t know …” he sighed. “It looks like a man could do better.”

“It looks that way to you, because you can see what would be better. The Negro knows something is terribly wrong, but with things the way they are, he can’t know that something better actually exists on the other side of work and study. We are all born blank. It’s the same for blacks or whites or any other shade of man. Your blanks have been filled in far differently from those of a child grown up in the filth and poverty of the ghetto.”

He drove without speaking through a thundershower that crinkled the windshield and raised the hum of his tires an octave.

“But the situation is changing,” I said after a time. “The Negro may not understand exactly
how
, but he knows one thing - the only way out of this tragedy is through education, training. Thousands of them sacrifice everything to get the education, to prove once and for all that the Negro’s capacity for learning, for accomplishment, is equal to that of any other man - that the pigment has nothing to do with degrees of intelligence, talent or virtue. This isn’t just wishful thinking. It’s been proved conclusively in every field.”

“We don’t hear about those things,” he said.

“I know. Southern newspapers print every rape, attempted rape, suspected rape and ‘maybe rape,’ but outstanding accomplishment is not considered newsworthy. Even the Southern Negro has little chance to know this, since he reads the same slanted reports in the newspapers.”

The young man slowed to a halt in a little settlement to let me out: “I’m sorry about a while ago - I don’t know what got into me,” he said.

“I’ve already forgotten it.”

“No offense?”

“No offense.”

“Okay. Good luck to you.”

I thanked him and stepped out onto the wet neon reflections of the road. The air, cool and mist-filled, surrounded me with its freshness. I watched the red taillight of his car fog into the distance.

I had no time to worry about sitting down or getting a sandwich. An old-model car tooted its horn and skidded to a stop
a few yards beyond me. The smell of a rainy Alabama night, the succession of oddments turned me suddenly sick with dread at what this stranger would want. But I had no alternative. There was no place there to sleep.

“Where you going?” he asked.

“Mobile,” I said. He told me to get in. I glanced through the glassless window to see a heavyset, round-faced, tough-looking young man.

As we drove, the tensions drained from me. He was boisterous, loud and guileless. I could only conclude that he was color blind, since he appeared totally unaware that I was a Negro. He enjoyed company, nothing more. He told me he was a construction worker and tonight he was late getting home to his wife and infant son. “I couldn’t get this sonofabitching rattletrap to go,” he said. “I leave the good car at home for my wife.”

For an hour we delighted ourselves with talk of our children. The experience of parenthood filled him with enthusiasm and he recited the endless merits of his son and drew me out to tell him of my children.

“I can see I’m not going to make it without something to eat,” he said. “I’m usually home by six and my wife has supper on the table. You had any supper?”

“No, I sure haven’t.”

“You want a hamburger?”

“I don’t think there’s anyplace here that would serve me.”

“Shit, I’ll bring it to the car. We can eat while I’m driving.”

I watched him walk into the roadside café. He looked young, not over twenty, and I wondered how he had escaped the habit of guarded fencing that goes on constantly between whites and Negroes in the South wherever they meet. He was the first man I met of either color who did not confuse the popular image of the thing with the thing itself.

I wondered where he got this, and sought to discover the source of his attitude during the drive into Mobile. His background, his education and his home were ordinary. On the car radio he played with relish the twang-twang blues type of music and his TV preferences were westerns. “Oh, hell, I can’t go for
those old heavy dramas.” Perhaps his religion? “My wife’s a Presbyterian. Sometimes I go with her. But I don’t much like it.” Perhaps his reading?