Paid Servant by E. R. Braithwaite Page B

involvement with all humanity that neither of them had asked any question about the child’s religion or that of his parents, if it was known. The fact that they were Jews was very much secondary to the fact that they were human beings.
    I always carried some of the application forms in my brief case, and now they completed one of these, with a certain amount of ribaldry over some of the details.
    The train ride home to Ilford was long, with several changes, and it was with a grateful feeling of something accomplished that I finally crawled into bed.

Chapter      Four
    M ERELY FOR A CHANGE in the dull, daily routine of riding the Underground to work all the way, I came out at Mile End Station, caught a bus for the rest of the journey, and climbed to the upper deck. It was crowded, but I saw an empty place on one of the two front seats and squeezed my way there. When I had settled myself I noticed that the person sitting beside me was a Negro. His face was turned towards the windows on his side, as if he were deeply interested in the drab sameness of the scene which flitted by. Anyway, I said “Hello, there,” and he quickly turned and smiled, as if he had been waiting for a signal from me before even acknowledging my presence. This did not surprise me, because it was one of the things I had been learning about Negroes in Britain, especially Negroes from the West Indies.
    In their sunsplashed islands, West Indian Negroes are generally gay, friendly, talkative people, accustomed to greeting each other, whether stranger or friend, with a wave, a nod, a wink, or “Hi, man”. They see each other, look each other in the face in hope of recognizing someone from the same town, village, street, school, or place of employment, and if on another island, they look into each other’s faces in the hope of recognizing someone from home.
    In Britain, they behave quite differently. They very rarely look another strange Negro in the face, and yet, should one be bold enough to offer the old familiar “Hi there” or “Hi, man,” the reaction is immediately friendly, as if there is always the hope of being addressed, though veiled by the seeming preoccupation with something else. I have seen this phenomenon very often, and conclude that it is part of the plurality of artifices behind which Negroes in Britain are prone to hide in attempting to evade the manifold face of prejudice. For they frequently find prejudice within their own ranks, brought along with them to Britain to add to the difficulties against which they constantly declaim.
    Although circumscribed, as a group, by the anti-Negro prejudice which shows itself in a variety of ways, they still find time and energy to maintain among themselves the invidious demarcations between manual worker, office worker and student groups; between dark-skinned and light-skinned; between the educated and the unlettered. As a result, they remain dislocated, scattered, leaderless and voiceless, without any positive organization or representation, in spite of the many able and talented ones to be found, at all levels, among them.
    In times of crisis, they mill madly around, striking out blindly against the common enemy, but at the same time fighting among themselves for the elusive laurels of leadership. But as soon as the high point of the crisis is past they quickly revert to self-interest, loquaciously against any suggestion of unified, positive action to establish that group dignity without which all their efforts are largely in vain. At the drop of a hat, or even before, they would engage each other on their favourite topic, racial prejudice in Britain; yet any suggestion that they shoulder some of the responsibility for improvement in inter-racial relationship receives the stock answer, “What can we do in this white man’s country?”
    The manual workers give their attention and time to earning enough to provide food, clothing, shelter