Reluctant Neighbors by E. R. Braithwaite
“Aren’t you deliberately attempting to oversimplify the situation?” he retorted. “There are hundreds of blacks who are politically conscious and active without being extremists. You know that as well as I do. Senators. Congressmen. Professionals. Others. No one could call them extremists. Even yourself. In spite of what you say I wouldn’t call you an extremist.”
“Whether you would or not is of no consequence. And the word is senator, not senators. There are those who, like myself, do not publicize their extremism. Perhaps we have learned to deal with it inside ourselves. Perhaps we have learned or are learning to control it, or channel it, or repress it or suppress it according to our interests, our priorities or our needs. But it is there just the same.”
The thing was running away with me, surprising me, shocking me with its intensity. This stranger had really neither harmed me nor abused me, nor said anything insulting or defamatory. Yet, so quickly, as if too long dormant and impatient of awakening, the rage had overtaken me, holding me helpless. Side by side, the stranger and I were no longer neighbors but adversaries suddenly separated by an isolation layers of generations thick. A few moments of conversation, quite idle conversation, had produced this. Idle conversation, because I could not believe that any of it really meant anything more to him than a momentary topic about which he could try to be impressively knowledgeable.
He nervously shifted in his seat. Perhaps I had startled him, for though we had spoken in low tones, the inescapable vigor in my voice must have conveyed some hint of the internal violence with which I struggled. Yet, when he spoke his voice was still quite controlled, his attitude patient, even conciliatory.
“Do you make no distinction between people like yourself and those who demonstrate their extremism by bombing and burning buildings? Do you feel any identity with them? You’ve been using the term ‘brothers.’ Do you really feel that close to them?”
Again that question which quickly burrowed deep down into the private place where I lived. Did I really feel that close to them? How could I truthfully answer that? I wanted to feel close but differences imposed awful strains upon the similarities between us. Perhaps the problem was lodged in our background. I was not afraid of whites. I’d grown up with them, through all the activities of youth in Guyana and the later times of academic and athletic competition in England. They were favored for employment and that favor extended into many other areas. But I’d never feared them. Nor hated them until my personal progress was so obviously restricted and denied. Yet, even in my state of hatred there was no fear. My childhood in Guyana was happy and comfortable. No terror stalked the nights. No burning crosses. No bloodthirsty lynch gangs. No punitive posses. No vigilantes.
Blacks were men. Whites were men. Privileged, but yet merely men. The lines were crossed and recrossed. The occasional fair-skinned child born to a black mother, or the dark-skinned child born to the wife of English planter or police commissioner or administrator or banker. Myself too young then to understand the references to a cuckoo in the nest. England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Scandinavia, Germany. I’d lived and worked among whites, still aware of the privileges, but never afraid of them. Never personally threatened by them. Having no background of terrifying experience such as so many American blacks could relate to me. I’d traveled through Europe, caught overnight in many a tiny village or hamlet and entered with assurance through the doors of the local hostelry or inn or hotel. Whatever was available. No fear.
In the United States the blacks lived different lives, and those lives had colored their outlook and their attitude towards whites. I was born outside that outlook, but each day of living in the American community brought it closer to me, made it more acutely understandable, reduced the areas of difference into insignificance. In the eyes of the host community I was merely another black; I could not afford the luxury of isolating myself from the common cause. In this train, at this time, this one beside me would tell me I am different, merely because he was sitting beside me. Had he been fortunate enough to find himself another seat I would have remained a part of the blackness which he claimed threatened him and others like him. From the distance of another seat he would readily have accepted my identity with the brothers, the bombing, burning brothers. So, let’s keep it that way.
“Distinctions? Yes. Of course there are distinctions. But there is also identity. I am identified with every other brother. In fact you identify me with every brother. My black face is enough. Yes, I feel identity with the brothers, and I don’t care who they are. We are all subject to your general ostracism and contempt, aren’t we?”
“So you would bomb and burn as they do?”
“As who do?”
“Any of the extremists who bomb and burn. The Black Panthers, for instance.” I thought about that awhile.
“I’m wondering why you’ve selected the Panthers as your example of violence. However, let me say this. I identify with every black brother and sister, whoever they are, wherever they might be. This does not mean that I support whatever they do or say. But why the Panthers? I’ve not heard of them bombing or burning anywhere.”
“They’ve declared themselves antipathetic to this country’s laws and order, and dedicated to violence. Armed violence.”
“Is that right? I must confess that perhaps you’re better informed about them than I am. I have read that they announce themselves determined no longer to put up with abuse or ill treatment, and have stated their intention to defend themselves, violently if necessary. It seems to me that the operative word here is defend. Perhaps they anticipated and expected a need to defend themselves.”
“Only because they deliberately brandished firearms, assumed postures and made inflammatory statements of violent intent against the police, the courts and every symbol of well-constituted authority. No well-ordered society can ignore or condone such threats.”
“You amaze me. You really do. What is so special about the Panthers? The name? Well, let’s try another for sound. What about the Ku Klux Klan? Surely that’s a name which conjures up a record for violence the Black Panthers could never emulate. Terror by night. Bombings. Burnings. Lynchings. You name it. And its membership in some instances boasts impressive names. To date, the Panthers have not bombed or burned anywhere. If the information media are to be believed, the only victims of Panther violence are themselves Panthers. And even that remains very much in the realm of speculation.”
I had cooled off somewhat. Perhaps it was all this talk about the Panthers. Or it may have been him. His general coolness. Here and there the hint of discomfort, but generally cool, controlled.
“We are both laymen in this matter,” he said. “We have to depend on published opinions, observations or informed guesses for what we know of them. But the police are professionals. The record of their encounters with the Panthers speaks for itself. Same thing with the FBI. They publicly named the Panthers as a real and present threat to the American society. Do you discount all that?”
“I do not discount it. Nor do I set too great store by it. The recently published disclosures of police harassment and murder of Panthers in Chicago also speaks for itself. I do not share the popular view that the Panthers are really dangerous, except to themselves. It may be that their very name attracts violent police reaction. I don’t know. I sometimes wonder whether we’d have heard so much about them if they’d not displayed their arms for public attention and their philosophy for public scrutiny.”
“If they weren’t black. Is that what you mean?”
“That’s not what I meant, but it’s an idea. Forming a group, arming it and cementing it together with some kind of philosophy is quite familiar on the American scene. You and I hear and read of such groups. Vigilantes, they’re called. They’re dedicated to violence, aren’t they? No matter what excuses they plausibly advance. But that the brothers should emulate this kind of activity is more than you can bear, because the public decl
“You know, you never answered a question I asked earlier. Do you condone the violence they advocate? Against the police? Even against their own membership?”
“I thought I’d answered that. I don’t condone violence either by them or against them. But why all this talk about the Panthers and violence? Yours is a violent society. The gun is a far more familiar symbol than the Bible or apple pie. It is the linchpin of your continuing folklore. You live with it. In it. By it. In the course of any twenty-four hours you see a gun many times. In shop windows. On bank guards. On policemen. On children at play. Wherever you go the gun is there ahead of you.”
Remembering the day not long ago when, new to the convoluted layout of the East Village, I’d got myself hopelessly lost. I spotted a policeman strolling slowly along a street and drove up to stop alongside of him. I rolled down my near-side window and called to him. As he approached the car his right hand reached down surreptitiously to free the flap of his holster. Perhaps an unconscious gesture, the result of continuous practice. Obviously with no ill intent towards me because we exchanged courtesies and I went my way well directed. But with a feeling of dread. What if I had made some gesture, innocent in itself but seeming to him threatening? Would his reflex action have been to draw and shoot, all part of a conditioned, self-preserving response? The image stayed with me. A bright, handsome young man forced by the circumstances of his life and work to depend on the gun for his survival. Violent means in a violent society. That dependence increasing with each day’s dangers. The wonder was that he yet remained courteously human. What was that Biblical bit about those who live by the sword? Yes, I’d seen the photographs of armed Panthers. What had it brought them? Young men and women, beautiful, intelligent, strong, gifted, setting themselves up as targets and inviting the licensed hunters to open season. Waste. Sheer waste. At this point in their history black Americans need all their resources, particularly their human resources. To see these resources frittered away so casually, so brutally, is deeply saddening. Each death reduces the whole. Each imprisonment reduces the whole. Cleaver. Hampton. Jackson. Seale. All the others. Men of intellect, imagination, ability. Perhaps every state of resistance demands its sacrifices, but need the sacrifices be made so blindly?
My neighbor had removed his spectacles and was watching me. Speculatively. Weighing in his mind what I had said or whatever it was he intended to say? A thought popped into my head. I asked him, “What would you say if I told you I was a Panther?”
This time the smile was forced. The facial muscles twitched obediently but the eyes took no part in the action.
“You must be kidding.”
“Yes. I’m kidding.” Reading him. It would require very little to convince him. Black and Panther. Panther and black. He’d have no difficulty making the transposition.
“I’m thinking of what you said a moment ago.” The spectacles held up against the light for his inspection. “Does all that mean you are opposed to violence? Would you call yourself nonviolent?”
I’d never faced that question before. Not about myself. All my life I’ve been plagued by a temper quickly stirred into raging proportions, and all my life I’ve struggled to contain and control it. Well, perhaps, not all my life. During my boyhood my parents had applied the control, most often painfully. Always with the warning that my violent temper would bring me grievous trouble. Always I was punished for giving way to it. Punished, even when believing myself in the right, knowing that my anger and its violent expression were fully justified.
Ten years old and playing marbles with a neighbor’s son in the backyard of his home. Lucky and winning. His irritation and hostility keeping pace with his losing streak. Continuing to play and his continuing to lose, the glossy spoils heavy in my pocket. The final game and his outburst of rage as I reached to collect my winnings. Snatching it up and cursing. “Stinking nigger.” Tears of frustration rolling down his cheeks. White cheeks. Portuguese cheeks. Soon to become streaked and bloodied as I dived at him and punched him to the ground. Dragged him to the garden faucet and opened the jet stream on his face while punching him into submission. Pulled off him by his father and brothers who screamed that I was trying to drown him and murder him. Hauled home, his father doing all the talking, complaining to my mother. Myself silent because no child was allowed to contradict any grownup. Knowing that I’d be punished. For half drowning Johnny Nascimento, for getting my clothing soaked and muddied and for the words which the elder Nascimento claimed I’d used to him.
Tearfully explaining to my mother about the game and the names which Johnny, the loser, had called me. Knowing inside myself that the names had meant nothing, but the sight of him grabbing up the final glossy marble! It was mine. I’d won it. “Sticks and stones,” my mother reminded me, the strap rising and falling. “You could have killed that ‘Portagee boy.’” Was there in her voice a measure of contempt? She never had any difficulty with the word Portuguese, but then, yes, then she said “Portagee.” Her rage was greater than mine. In later, more mature years I’ve wondered why. The “Portagee boy” and I were never reconciled.
“Would you call yourself nonviolent?” He repeated the question.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Answering as much for myself as for him. Maybe more for myself. Intellectually I argue with myself that violence is wasteful. Stupidly wasteful. Especially for those of us, those of us blacks, who are without strength. Strength of arms. Strength of money. Violence and strength are natural partners. Bedmates. Whenever violence is used successfully those who use it are powerful enough or influential enough or rich enough to control the aftermath of that violence. They are able to ensure that the results of violence are favorable to themselves, and they are powerful enough to be unaffected by any unfavorable results. The rich and influential can be casually, brutally violent. They can afford to be violent.
Outside Africa black people are neither numerous enough nor influential enough to benefit from violence. Intellectually I argue this with myself. Emotionally, I’m not so sure. Each of my own violent outbursts has satisfied something in me. Temporarily. The sight of Johnny Nascimento’s puffed and bleeding face satisfied something in me. Sure he kept the marble, but he’d not be able to enjoy it for a very long time. After the sting of my own beating had subsided I thought with relish of what I’d done to him. Other times in other places there had been other prods to violent outburst. The white mouth always ready with the final epithet “stinking nigger.” Jesus Christ! What’s in a word? “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me,” my mother often quoted to me, but the sticks and stones have never bruised any deeper than the skin. The words with their contempt have pierced skin and spirit to lodge themselves deep in the pride. Why had I reacted so violently to Nascimento? It was the very first time I’d been called “nigger.” And yet I had reacted out of an immediate subliminal understanding of the contempt in the word. Sticks and Stones! Through the long empty months job hunting in England I’d felt the sticks and stones of rejection. I’d lived with them, exposing myself to them day in, day out. But the words?
That day in Stepney, 1950, and reasonably secure with my teaching job and the persistent hope of still finding a crack in the high wall around engineering technology. Still sending the applications. Waiting at the bus stop for the homeward-bound bus. Joined there by an attractive young brunette who kept a sterile distance between us. Eyes averted. Soon, in the near distance and approaching, three youths, noisy, playfully punching and jostling each other. Pausing near the girl, then surrounding her. Not touching, walking around her, appraising her legs and hair and face and dress. Outbidding each other in ribald commentary. M
“Why don’t you fellows leave the young lady alone?” Prompted by no Sir Galahad notions, but disliking the bullying. The three of them on one.
“You talking to us?” One of them turned to look at me, jerking his head to clear the scraggy hair from his eyes. Moving towards me, thumbs hooked in his brass-studded belt. His companions following, deploying themselves on either side of him to confront me. Near.
“You talking to us, nigger?” Tough. So tough.
“I said why don’t you leave the young lady alone?” Cold inside, the rage ready, waiting to explode. The talking one made a movement with his arm.
Those years of training in unarmed combat rushing back upon me. February, 1941, at Cranwell College and the Canadian instructor saying, “Watch their eyes. A guy plans to come at you, you see it in his eyes. When you see it, move. Don’t wait for him to connect. You wait and you’re dead. Move. Move. Get him first.” Hearing it again in my head. Feeling the thrill in my guts. Dropping my brief case and reaching for the nearest one, my right hand jabbing stiff-fingered for his solar plexus, swinging the elbow sideways against his face as it jackknifed downward. Letting him fall. Feeling the kick high on my right thigh from another. Turning and closing with him, my hands around his head, pulling his unprotected face suddenly hard to meet my forehead. The squelchy sound of his mashed nose. His scream as I let him go. The third already in flight, his companions on the ground. The girl staring open-mouthed, voiceless. I picked up my brief case. Nothing to be done about my blood-spattered shirt front and coat. The two scrambling to their feet and away, the cursing a mumbled wake like the dull throbbing in my right thigh. The bus arrived and the girl hurried on to sit way up front, far away from me.