What is the color of your skin? Are you a child of the sun or a child of
the snow? Do you come with red in your face? Or is there a shadow across
your head? Are you the white child of a black mother or the black child
of a white mother? I see your brown red right hand. How warm it feels to
me. I look into your glowing equatorial eyes. How like being led to
fathers and mothers that is. You bring me north south east west. You
guide yourselves to me. You distribute me among yourselves. I am your
child no matter how. Your child no matter where. There are seas
everywhere. But there is no sea between us. There are interfering miles
of space and hours of time. But they dont break us from each other. I
was born of my mother and here I am. You were born of your mothers and
there you are. The earth was born of the sun. The sun was born of what?
I mix up the elements. I come out one place. You come out another place.
From the same mother womb. From the same father seed. To the same
brother earth. Do you hold a noose over me? Or drop a sword from above
as I pass? Or shoot me down in my tracks? Or pass laws of which I'm the
victim? Or lock your housedoors when I knock? My credentials are the
same as yours: no better than yours. I am the harvest of the same
planting: no more than that harvest. Like you I have one life to live on
one earth before I pass on. Do I stand on my icy heritage and freeze the
heat out of your love? Remember the stream: go up with it to its
sources: go down with it to the sea. Every atom dancing in the light or
clouded by the storm advances and retreats in perfect equity and perfect
order. Dear prouds and humbles: by God I'm yours and you're mine. Do you
believe that anything can take you from me or take me from you? I meet
you. I read about you. I am told all the terrible truths. But everything
draws me nearer. Nothing drives me away. If you could be less to me than
I am to myself then I would have to be more to myself than I could be to
you. That would violate my democracy. That would be setting one thing
above another. When I elevate myself with all I am a democrat. When I
lift myself above the rest I am a tyrant. Listen to me. You who are
reading what I write. Maybe you are black. Maybe you are pink or white
or yellow. Maybe you are between or across. All that goes with maybe.
But when you are my brother there is no maybe to it. If I could look at
any man and not see his mother as my own I'd be false to all motherhood.
If I could look at any woman and not see her father as my own I'd be
false to all fatherhood. I'm not satisfied with one mother. I want all
mothers. Nor with one father. I want all fathers. Nor with my children.
I want all children. I'm not satisfied with one color. I want all
colors. Nor with one race. I want all races. Nor with one language. I
want all languages. My hunger is fiercely universal. I'm not fed till
I've eaten at every table. I can only know one woman by knowing all
women. I can only know one people by knowing all peoples. What is the
color of my skin? What is the sound to the song? What is the water to
the ocean? That's what the rest of me is to my exterior. That's what the
substance in me is to my show. That's what my foundations are to my
rooftree. There at the bottom we are together. And at the top: there we
are together. We begin together and end together. But we are alienated
in the journey. When we start out in the morning we say good by. When we
meet again at night we ask: How do you do? What wrenched us apart in the
struggle of the pilgrimage? Why should those who are friends before and
friends again after be enemies while they travel? I say to the
other-colored peoples: You have to be my brothers whether you want to or
not, thank God. Do they say to me: You have to be my brother whether you
want to or not, thank God? What is the color of your soul? What is the
color of your skin?
What is the color of your skin? I see. You are a nigger. You are a
damned dago. You are the man on the other side of the wall. The man over
somewhere. The yellow peril. The ignorant dirty emigrant. The two for a
quarter six for a half dollar mill slave. There is a border line between
us. There are incomes between us. There is a whole code of manners
between us. You are the godforsaken polack. You are the hooknosed jew.
You are the monkeyfaced irishman. You are the beerguzzled deutscher. I
call you names. I can't see you. You are in the next yard. The stars
look just as well from the next yard. But I insist upon the exclusive
astronomy of my own garden. I smell your stale clothes. I am choked by
the aromas of your foul kitchens. Would you like your sister to marry an
african? I'm not fussy. I'm only a man. A white man. I don't draw lines
ferninst you. I only draw lines in favor of myself. Do you mean to say
you think these ignoramuses as good as yourself? Do you tell me that
you're no better than the herd? Nonsense. There's the nietzschean word
for it. The average man is the herd. The awkward big-fisted loon. The
idiot crowd. The people everybody kicks. The folks everybody despises.
The men women children you wouldn't invite into your home. I use them.
Ride them. Make money off them. But that's all I want of them. Just the
robber money. Not the man love. Look at them filing to work tired to
start with. Look at them filing back from work like a funeral nearly
dead to end with. They're a rum lot. They're worth a hundred cents on
the dollar and up in the labor market. They're worth about ten cents on
the dollar and under on the social plane. My God! but they're a scabby
bunch. It makes me sick to see them. Look at them as they work their
treadmill. Don't they give themselves away? Right and left, north and
south, look where you choose: they are the slobbering tobaccoey
stay-behinds and passbacks of the dumpheap. Every mother's son of 'em
useful to me maybe but useless to themselves. Down in their luck, to be
sure. But sentenced for life just the same. The jackjohnsons of society.
The refuse of birth and death. The clods. The dullards. The heavyfooted
and heavyheaded bowlegs and knock-knees. The slave asses yoked to an
inescapable burden. Who are you that you dont belong? Are you of us few
or of their very many? Are you of the interest bearing rent collecting
profit class or do you fester in these maggoty bottoms of fate? Stay
where you fall no matter how far down you are. Dont try to climb. We
shove you all over the cliff again. We throw dust in your eyes. We
confuse you in clouds of verbiage. We disarm you. We have laws to make
you afraid. We have creeds to make you hopeless. We have poets who kill
you with pensive despairs. Do you dare aspire to anything? Stay where
you are in your deep mud. There is no above to you. No beyond. No ease.
No dreamworld. You were condemned before you were born. You remain
condemned while you live. And you will continue condemned when you
become the dung in the barnyard at last. A woman heard me expressing my
race faith. She asked me: "How would you like to have a grandchild with
a black skin?" That was it. That was the whole devilish poisonous story.
The entire problem prejudice in a nutshell. She didn't ask: How would
you like to have a grandchild with a black soul? That would have meant
something. But she wasn't interested in souls. She was interested in
skins. How would I like to have a grandchild with a black skin. What is
the color of your skin?
What is the color of your skin? Maybe you have a black skin and a white
heart. Maybe you have a white skin and a black heart. I dont know. We
talk about the yellow peril when we think of Asia. And we talk about the
brown peril when we think of Italy. And we talk about the black peril
when we think of South Carolina. But all of us are afraid to talk of the
white peril. I see no perils. My arms reach out to all. I want the
Chinaman to possess himself of the earth if he's an earth man. Let him
freely pass right and left testing himself and us. Dont put up pennywise
barriers built on poundfoolish laws. Rather do anything than stop your
fraternities short of the total census of man. Every interfering sea,
every contradicting statute, every counterchecking prejudice, every
adventure in money-making, that nullifies the international inference is
a slap in the face of brotherhood. Damn up the human stream. Then you
damn down the soul. The old negro mammy in Georgia asked me as I left:
Will you do something for me? I said: Yes, if you'll do something for
me? She asked: Will you kiss me good by? I said: Yes--on condition that
you kiss me good by. I would only be worthy to take if I was worthy to
give. I'd say to all the world: I would only be worthy of loving if I
was worthy of being loved. I would only be worthy of being an American
if I was worthy of being a Jap. I would only be worthy of serving if I
was worthy of being served. I would only cease being a peril if I ceased
calling others perilous. How could I be worthy of being a white man if I
was too good to be a black man? Ethiopia cries out loud to Scandinavia.
India cries out loud to England. All the peoples cry out loud from
everywhere to all the peoples. There is no peril in peoples. There is
only peril in you and me. There is no peril in anything that brings any
of us together. There is only peril in what keeps us or drives us apart.
I go with mothers fathers children. I go with birth and death. I go with
dreaming and believing. I go with mixing and mating. These are the same
everywhere. The same with you black and me white. The same with my skin
burnt to fire and the same with your skin frozen to the whiteness of
snow. The same with duskies and palefaces. I dont go with maps. With
geographies. With diplomacies. With kingdoms and republics. With genius
aristocracy pauperism. With success and the main chance. I only go with
people. With folks. And with them I go anywhere they go. Into any hell
or any heaven. Into any hope or any despair. With people. Where people
go I may go too. But where people are refused there I am shut out. The
woman asked me: Would you like to have a grandchild with a black skin?
She brought her question to the wrong court. She should not have
addressed it to me. She should have taken it to God. Would God like to
have a grandchild with a black skin? It's as though we asked God: What
would you think of yourself if you happened to be black or red? What is
the color of your soul? What is the color of your skin?
O you despairers of destiny! O you plunderers of time! you make a
great noise in the silences:
All that you need to do is to open your eyes: that is the secret:
look:
You come to me; I cant look for you: I can only say, look:
I cant give you a free pass to the promised land: I can only say
look: if you only look you will need no pass:
O, why do you bury your face in the dust? get up: lift yourself
high enough to look over your own head:
Everything you love is yours.