Page:Nigger Heaven (1926).pdf/62

 ally speaking, the white race is not vitally interested in the Negro problem. In the mass they are quite indifferent to it. It doesn't bother them, so they just forget it. I learned that much at Harvard. They don't argue about it or even think about it much. Rather, they are inclined to ignore it, until some jig or other annoys them and then they lynch him or start a riot or something.

Then, he continued, still speaking earnestly, there is the policy of the young coloured intellectuals, from whom we have heard so much during the past two years, which is simply to adopt a mental attitude of equality and break the bars down gradually through the work of our artists. That won't be successful either, except for the artists. Of course, Paul Robeson and Roland Hayes and Countee Cullen can go anywhere within reason. They will be invited to white dinner parties, but I don't see how that's going to affect the rest of us.

Why not? Olive demanded.

Because the white people they meet will regard them as geniuses, in other words, exceptions. Yes, they will say to themselves, these are certainly unusually brilliant and delightful individuals; it's a pity all Negroes aren't like them. So they will go on neglecting the plight in which our respectable middle class finds itself.

Well, Mary said, I thought you had a solution.

So I have. It's simple enough to state, not so