Langston Hughes and the *Chicago Defender* by Langston Hughes

Author:Langston Hughes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion / Religion, Politics & State
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2022-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

Ill Wind Blows Good

It is an ill wind that blows nobody good! War is an ugly thing. Fascism is an ugly thing. White or black war, white or black fascism, slaughter of whatever color, or autocracy of whatever color is ugly. I hold no brief for Japanese fascism. I do not want a murderous and fascist-minded world for mine—yellow, brown, black or white. But one good thing this war has done is that it has begun to weaken the unmitigated gall of white imperialism around the world, and it has awakened the colored peoples of the earth to the glaring paradox of Christian democratic pronouncements as contrasted with actual official practices.

Japanese imperialism is just as bad as any other—except that the Japanese do not draw the color line. How could they, being colored themselves? Their little clash at arms with the British and Americans will, I think, profoundly change the future pattern of life in Asia. The British, no doubt, will take back Hong Kong, just as we will take back Manila. The big fine European-style hotels and apartment houses will again go white. White admirals and generals and viceroys and over-lords and bankers and missionaries and whores will again move in. They will think they are living swell.

Passing in the sunlit streets outside, the brown and yellow natives will look up at those fine buildings FOR WHITE ONLY. They will say, “Colored lived there once!” Then silently to themselves they will think, “We will live there again!” And each such thought will be a coffin-nail in the stinking little old black box of Western imperialism.

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