Honorary White by E. R. Braithwaite

questions, but to protest my visit to his country. He’d mentioned that he’d tried to reach both Foster and Ashe without any success.
    â€œHow do you imagine anyone outside your country would know anything about conditions here if no one made any attempt to learn at first hand?” I asked.
    â€œYou could learn without coming here. Especially you. You were at the United Nations. Didn’t you meet any of our brothers who went there to petition? Some of our brothers from here and South West Africa made it over to the States. Didn’t any of them see you?”
    â€œYes. I met some of them.”
    â€œDidn’t you believe what they told you?”
    â€œI was persuaded by what they told me.”
    â€œDon’t give me all that diplomatic shit, man. Either you believed them or you didn’t.”
    â€œI was generally persuaded by them, but I welcomed the opportunity to see the situation for myself. This is it.”
    â€œDo you dash off to every country to check everything for yourself?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen why this? Did you have any difficulty getting a visa from this government?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œShit, man, doesn’t that tell you anything? Your books were banned in this country. Even today Blacks can’t see your film in the public bijou, and that, too, was banned to Whites for some time. In spite of all that these Afrikaners gave you a visa to come here. Think, man! Can’t you see they’re planning to use you?”
    â€œLook, they can plan what the hell they like, that has nothing to do with me. I was issued a visa. Fine. But nobody can control how I think about what I see and hear and feel.” And, on impulse added, “Not even you.”
    He laughed, reaching forward to touch me.
    â€œYou think so? You really think so? By the time these sons-of-bitches are through with you, you’ll be singing their tune without realizing it. You’ll go back to the States and tell people all about how freely you were allowed to move about. No supervision, therefore, no police state. Which makes a liar out of all of us. Right? They’ll wine you and dine you and prove that educated Blacks can make it anywhere. Only the lazy Bantu has to be kicked in the ass and locked in a ghetto to make him stir himself. They’ll forget to tell you that he is disenfranchised, denied a reasonable education and the right to bargain for his labor and compete for the job he wants to do. Yes, friend, they’ll tell you you’re different and, you know something, you’ll end up believing it.”
    â€œThink what you like,” I said.
    â€œEh?”
    â€œThink what the hell you like,” I repeated and stood up to leave. “Look, you invited me and I came to talk with you. I thought you’d tell me about what the life is like for you and others. I came because I wanted to learn the truth, to hear it for myself so I can write about it. I expected that you, black like me, would lay it on me, without all this bullshit. You think I was born yesterday? I’ve lived most of my adult life among Whites. London, Paris, New York, Rome. I’ve no illusions about them, but I don’t see them as bloody supermen either. They can’t control how I think and what I’ll write.” He had needled me to this point. He and the others. Who the hell did they think they were? Pouring their suspicions over me. Here they were locked tight in the rotten ghetto and wanting the outside world to know of their plight. Okay. I’d come in. Of my own free will. So tell me and I’ll write it. That’s what I was saying to them, but all I was getting was their suspicion and scorn.
    â€œHey, cool it, man.” He reached forward and pushed me back into the chair. “Don’t get excited. We’re talking. Relax.”
    â€œYou relax. You call that talking, making me seem like some half-assed idiot just because I’ve visited