Irving Wallace - The Man

“Now, it is a regrettable fact, or so I believe, that among American Negroes themselves, most of them, the lighter-skinned ones, often feel superior, and are envied or looked up to by their brethren. Why is this? I think the reasons are obvious. Just as whites consider white skin more esthetically satisfying than dark skin-despite the widely prevalent effort, constantly, to become sunburned or tanned by the sun, since this is a status symbol equated with leisure time and therefore wealth-despite this, whites find whiteness more attractive than blackness, just as in India and Brazil, the natives consider the lighter ones of their communities more attractive-so this same color scale has invaded and infected the American Negro community. But ahead of pure esthetics, there is a more compelling reason why American Negroes are frequently pleased to have, and are envied for having, tan or pink or almost white or totally white skins. It is that these lighter Negroes get closer to the majority of the white population, are more acceptable to the dominant white community, more apt, by mistake or their own intent, to escape discrimination and persecution. And often these almost white Negroes, seeing how much easier and better life is for them when they are taken for white instead of Negro, become tempted to cross the color line, to live permanently in the white world as whites, to enjoy being a part of the aristocratic majority with all its advantages and privileges.

“Yes, every Negro like myself, especially one who has had a nearly white wife and an almost white daughter, knows a good deal about this subject. I can tell you, with considerable authority to support the statement, that at least three thousand American Negroes with light-colored skin, at least three thousand a year, maybe as many as six thousand a year, take advantage of their appearance, slip away from their Negro homes, communities, family, friends, and cross over and join the white race. I can tell you, also on excellent authority, that of the one million mixed or interracial marriages in the United States at the present time, and there are that many, at least nine hundred thousand are marriages in which the white partner does not know his or her mate is Negro, or of some other color, because that mate is passing as white and has got away with it.

“For the most part, Negro parents do not like it when their fairer-colored children quit their race and surreptitiously join the white classification, the white world, the white census, pretending to be white when they are not. Negro parents will condone the action of one of their children if he passes as white in order to acquire a better education or get a better job that might not otherwise be available to him. This is condoned on the condition that the one passing remembers he or she is Negro, and returns from the school or business world to resume family and social life among his or her Negro brethren. What Negroes resent is permanent passing by one of their number who resigns entirely from his race, attempts to blot out his blackness, pretends to be white in school, in work, and in his social life. Yet, as much as Negroes resent permanent passing, only rarely do they expose or give away to whites the true origin of their defectors. They will guard a passer’s secret because, as black Americans, suffering as a minority group, they can understand how driven one of their kind must be to risk this form of escape into equality.”

Dilman halted. The circle of heads came up. He inspected the faces, nodded, then resumed speaking, and the heads went down to the note-taking.

“Now you have the background explaining my daughter’s defection. She was reared as a Negro, and around her she could see the terrible injustices and inequities that were to be her lot. When she realized that she alone, of the four of us, need not endure the suffering, like a curse on her for the rest of her years, she fled it, she escaped it, she ran over the line and far away, and lost herself in the white world of New York City, where there was no reason for anyone to suspect that she was not white. I will not stand here and say I approved of Mindy Dilman’s action. I will simply say I did not try to stop or dissuade her then, and I would not now, because I understand her and the three to six thousand other Negro girls and boys who annually cross over.

“I understand Mindy and all like her who pass as white, because I can understand, as many of you around me cannot, what it is to rid yourself of second-class citizenship, of poverty, of receiving contempt, of inferior social status, and to take on in their place, even if the pleasure is acquired through a deception, the advantages and joys of equality under the law, a respectable job, the feeling of belonging, new friendships based on one’s personality rather than color. It grieves me that this has to be so, that this is the condition in our country, but I understand it.

“And I understand more. I understand the deep rage within Negroes, the deep and helpless rage that defies all reason and sense, against not only their present lives but against lives in their past, rage at the accidents of heredity and of environment that made them as they are, and put them in the wrong place at the wrong time. Do you have the slightest idea of what truly makes one human being black and another white? When you consider how violently a person’s life is affected from birth to death if he is born black rather than white, it is almost impossible to believe that such a slight change within the human body creates this vast and traumatic difference.

“According to the foremost geneticists, blacks and whites possess within them the same pigments, the same skin-coloring elements, exactly the same red blood. Then what creates the difference in their skin shading which so affects their lives? The decisive factor is a particle that cannot even be seen by the naked eye, and it is called a gene. Yes, a gene. What is a gene? Bear with me briefly, gentlemen.

“To create a human life, a Mindy, requires two factors-a male sperm so minute that a hundred million sperms can be counted in a single drop of seminal fluid, and a female egg so tiny that it is smaller than a typewritten period on a printed page. Both this liquid drop and this period-sized egg contain something even smaller called chromosomes, and they in turn contain something yet smaller called genes, and these invisible genes are what give each newborn child his hereditary characteristics and control his skin color. If a new-born child has a dominant gene that will cause the production of excessive melanin, a dark pigment, he will be black on the outside. If he possesses a different kind of microscopic gene, he will be brown or yellow on the outside. And if he has an unseeable gene that produces hardly any melanin, he will be some shade of white. And so, what a Negro is comes down to no more than a slight shake and blend of genes, like tiny dice rolling out of the past, and when the shake is done, one goes before the world as a black-skinned individual or a white-skinned one, or somewhere in between, and that’s it for life. And because of this luck of genes, a man or woman comes forth a Negro, sometimes a fair-skinned Negro, but a Negro nevertheless, and because of this luck of genes, a human being is labeled for the rest of his days, in certain places, as an inferior. No wonder the Negro rages, both against this accident in his past, and against the conditions in the present that insensibly penalize him for his ancestry. No wonder one like Mindy, light-skinned through a hap-hazard blend of white and black genes, makes use of this avenue of escape.

“My daughter Mindy committed no crime, no matter how vicious the tone of the condemnation in Representative Zeke Miller’s newspaper. She committed a deception, yes-but that is a minor human frailty, not an exclusively Negroid characteristic. Who among us, at one time or another, has not engaged in deception? Husbands lie to their wives, and wives to their husbands, and children to their parents, in order to make life easier. I do not condone this, either. I say simply, it is there, it is life. Businessmen exaggerate and boast untruths, to improve their business. Clerks and white-collar workers lie about their accomplishments and skills, and products, to sell themselves or their goods, in order to succeed, to get ahead, to improve their lot. Some Jews pretend not to be Jews, in an effort to obtain a desired position, a country club membership, a house they long for in an anti-Semitic neighborhood, in order to escape the onus of being different. Some Catholics pretend not to be Catholics, because of feelings against the Holy See, to get along, just to get along. I deplore the deceptions in our culture, but more, I deplore the conditions that seem to make them necessary.