The Studs Terkel Reader by Studs Terkel

Author:Studs Terkel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2011-09-20T04:00:00+00:00

Do you have any colored friends?

Oh yes. Yes. [Pause.] I say colored friends and I think colored friends...but actually I really don’t know.

You don’t know what they think of you?

Not really. I can understand that. Because if I were colored, I’d be bitter, too. I think I’d try to control myself, try to be rational about it. I remember one night, a colored schoolteacher I know, we’re at a party, an interracial party, very nice. She forgot the potency of martinis and I was sitting talking to her and suddenly she looked at me very hard and said, “You’re my Caucasian enemy.” Very indignantly. Of course, I realized, you know... I mean, she just didn’t realize how potent a martini was. So you really don’t know.

Some guys that I know, colored, we talk and discuss the family and how things are going, and how their wives are and things like that, but I don’t think I know. [Pause.] I don’t think I know.

My son, a twenty-two-year-old boy, who’s been going to college, I really don’t think I know him. I think he knows me better than I know him. That’s one thing he really doesn’t like. I think he’d like it the other way around. The younger generation doesn’t think too highly of us. They think we made a mess of things, which we did. We seem to lead disorganized lives. Most of us dislike the work we’re doing. Most of us are anxious to go someplace else, thinking we could leave our troubles behind. They love us, our sons and daughters. But at the same time, they don’t think we did things correctly. They’re critical of us. They discuss things far more intelligently than we do. They think for themselves.

One day he brought up a charming little blond girl, not overly dressed, but not ragged or beatnik type. She was going down South to teach in one of the Freedom schools. Very much enthused about it. And she seemed to have a good idea why she was doing it. I mean she wasn’t looking for publicity or anything like that. She really thought she should be doing this. And then again, he met a colored girl, a beautiful creature, who also had a brilliant mind, you know, straight A student, one of those types. And she had absolutely no interest in civil rights. None. Couldn’t mean less to her, although she identifies with the colored people. She makes no attempt to pass, ’cause she could very easily. And then he has a friend whose sister and mother are both active in the civil rights movement. The sister was arrested twice in the last week.

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