The Life and Times of E. R. Braithwaite by E. R. Braithwaite

Author:E. R. Braithwaite [Braithwaite, E. R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504054676
Amazon: B07F26MZV1
Barnesnoble: B07F26MZV1
Goodreads: 41066984
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2018-07-03T00:00:00+00:00

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.

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