Page:Nigger Heaven (1926).pdf/60

 you a look-in at anything good if you're not somewhere near their colour. Ollie, do you think for one moment you'd be engaged as a private secretary if you were black? You know you wouldn't. And the same thing is true of me. Well, I've thought it all out and I'm going to pass!

Dick! The trio cried out simultaneously.

Yes, he went on defiantly. Not today or tomorrow perhaps, but sooner or later I'm going to pass, go over the line, and marry a white woman. It serves them jolly well right for forcing us to. I'd like to start a movement for all us near whites to pass. Ina short time there wouldn't be any Negro problem. There wouldn't even be any Negroes.

Well, a good many have preceded you, Howard said. I've heard there are about eight thousand in New York alone.

I couldn't do it, Olive asserted. I just couldn't do it. Somehow I feel my race.

What race? cried Dick. What race do you feel? If you lived in Brazil and had one drop of white blood you'd be considered white. Here the reverse is true. What's the coloured race ever done for you? Dick, now thoroughly worked up, demanded. What?

Well, they haven't done anything particularly for or against me, but somehow in spirit I belong to them. I know that. I don't feel white. What you do is your business, just as it's Buda's business. I just couldn't do it myself, that's all.