Page:Nigger Heaven (1926).pdf/201

 but the moving car, in which he was presently standing, must be very much like one, he thought. The procession had crowded into it, together with the other cars that made up the train, although all the seats had already been pre-empted by black workers who had entered at stations further up the line. There were, to be sure, a few white faces, faces of men and women who had come from the upper reaches of the island, but most of the skins were black or brown or mulatto. We should be known as the rainbow race, Byron assured himself.

He marvelled as he reflected that he was bound to a destination similar to that which was the goal of all these others, and yet he was not acquainted with a single person in the car. Perhaps even, he mused, their whole thinking processes, their very ideas, are different. I am no more like them than they are like me, than I am like any of my friends, he assured himself. In temperament and opinions we all disagree. Each of us has his own standard of thought and behaviour and yet we are forced by this prodigious power of prejudice to line up together. To the white world we are a mass. . ..

What would happen to this mass? Might it not be possible that prejudice was gradually creating, automatically and unconsciously, a force that would eventually solidify, in outward opinion at least, a mass that might even assume an aggressive attitude? Or would this mass, under this pressure of prejudice, be dissipated and swept apart?