We defend our curious role in Spain by referring to the Russian menace and the necessity of protecting the free world. Whoever doubts this last statement has only to open his ears, his heart, his mind, to the testimony of - for example - any Cuban peasant or any Spanish poet, and ask himself what he would feel about us if he were the victim of our performance in pre-Castro Cuba or in Spain. Privately, we cannot stand our lives and dare not examine them domestically, we take no responsibility for (and no pride in) what goes on in our country and, internationally, for many millions of people, we are an unmitigated disaster. We are controlled here by our confusion, far more than we know, and the American dream has therefore become something much more closely resembling a nightmare, on the private, domestic, and international levels. It can be objected that I am speaking of political freedom in spiritual terms, but the political institutions of any nation are always menaced and are ultimately controlled by the spiritual state of that nation. “I have met only a very few people - and most of these were not Americans - who had any real desire to be free. The tendency has really been, insofar as this was possible, to dismiss white people as the slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing.”
And perhaps this attitude, held in spite of what they know and have endured, helps to explain why Negroes, on the whole, and until lately, have allowed themselves to feel so little hatred. Negroes know far more about white Americans than that it can almost be said, in fact, that they know about white Americans what parents-or, anyway, mothers-know about their children, and that they very often regard white Americans that way. “The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed the collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors, that American men are the world's most direct and virile, that American women are pure.
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