Be The Best Of Whatever You Are.

Here Is The True Meaning And Value Of Compassion And Nonviolence, When It Helps Us To See The Enemy's Point Of View, To Hear His Questions, To Know His Assessment Of Ourselves. For From His View We May Indeed See The Basic Weaknesses Of Our Own Condition, And If We Are Mature, We May Learn And Grow And Profit From The Wisdom Of The Brothers Who Are Called The Opposition.

When The Negro Was Completely An Underdog, He Needed White Spokesmen. Liberals Played Their Parts In This Period Exceedingly Well.... But Now That The Negro Has Rejected His Role As An Underdog, He Has Become More Assertive In His Search For Identity And Group Solidarity; He Wants To Speak For Himself.

Liberalism Provided Me With An Intellectual Satisfaction That I Never Found In Fundamentalism. I Became So Enamored Of The Insights Of Liberalism That I Almost Fell Into The Trap Of Accepting Uncritically Everything It Encompassed.

As A Teenager I Had Never Been Able To Accept The Fact Of Having To Go To The Back Of A Bus Or Sit In The Segregated Section Of A Train. The First Time I Had Been Seated Behind A Curtain In A Dining Car, I Felt As If The Curtain Had Been Dropped On My Selfhood.

Discrimination Is A Hellhound That Gnaws At Negroes In Every Waking Moment Of Their Lives To Remind Them That The Lie Of Their Inferiority Is Accepted As Truth In The Society Dominating Them.