DN6

On White Men, Freight Elevators, and Distinctions of Flesh

December 10, 1943

But here it is, I was thinking, he wants to see me, wants me to come up a stinking freight elevator. How could I go? Turn my head to the wall, and not watch the comments or the wisecracks of the white elevator tender. He suffers segregation, but no more than he must. He never invited it. Hell! Guess he'd better go see him now, he [Christian] wouldn't like to go after he [Saxon] was dead. White folks always think of Negroes as being child-like in their sorrow. 

Hell! What's the use? A white man is born to his thoughts, just as a Negro is born to exploitation. Change things around and neither of them would be comfortable for a while. But some people never want that sort of thing.   

He opened the shrimp bag to get some shrimps and the cat Belzebub, caught his attention by his constant meowing that had been going on all the while. He took out the bag and looked down, Belzebub started forward, waving his long bushy tail in delicious, feline anticipation. . . . He opened his hands and took out a shrimp to its continual meowing, and placed it between the forefinger and thumb of his right hand, and reached it towards the cat. It snapped at the morsel instinctively, but with far more delicacy than it had done several months ago when it first came to the house. Then it would have been your hand and the meat--now he had learned nice distinctions of flesh.

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