Part 2

Pankhurst. The shadow on the horizon. The black darkness gathering overhead and around. The threatening forefinger of fate. The menace of maternity. The uprising of a sex. The comrade woman challenges the wife woman. It must be resented. We must throw back the waves of the sea. Here is another revolt against property. These people too put people first. How monstrous. To put a woman or a man first. To put a mother first. We must teach mothers their place. And people too: we must teach them their place. The death of a man or a woman: what is that? But burning down a house: that is an attack on civilization. These new women want everything. They treat husbands as if they were no more than men. They treat property as if it was dirt under their feet. They say nothing matters but hearts and love. Well: hearts and love are not bad if you keep them where hearts and love belong. But if you bring hearts and love into politics or economics then you are invading a forbidden sphere. We've got to set back the clock. Time's going too fast. A man said: I dont like it. I asked him: Dont like what? He said: This woman business. I asked: What woman business? He said: Woman in politics. I asked: Dont you think they're capable of politics? He exclaimed: My God, yes: too capable! I asked: Then why do you kick? He said: Because if they go into politics they'll make this a woman's world and I dont want to live in a woman's world. That's it. When the woman becomes real they dont want to live in a woman's world. Just as profit-believing people don't want to live in a man's world when a real man appears. If this is not a mother's world whose world is it? The man said: I dont want to live in a woman's world. Just as profit-believing people dont want from their own side: We don't want to live in a man's world. Yet if this is not a father's world whose world is it? You dont want the world the women will make it possible for real fathers to live in. You don't want the world the men will make it possible for real mothers to live in. You say: Half a world's a good enough world for me. You say: A whole world's too big for me. Then you hear the reply. Then you see the reply. Words reply. Mobs reply. Conflagration replies. Quarrels, battles, reply. This still water of man's peace has been ruffled by woman's tempest. Things were going on so good. Then these sexless rebels had to come. Just as money says to people in the economic sphere: Things were so serene: then you had to come. Yes, something always has to come. Every time orthodoxy settles itself for a long tenure something has to come. Just as clear days are getting used to themselves stormy days come. We had things arranged just about right. It wasn't ideal. We acknowledge imperfections. But on the whole it was about right. Woman was just about where she ought to be. Labor too was just about where it ought to be. Then something happened. Something always does happen. Labor got to growling. And now woman's got to growling. Woman. Haven't we given woman the choicest tidbits of life? And yet she says no. She says that would be all right if something else was first all right. That something else is her freedom. Is her claim to herself. She says that comes first. Why: that's just what labor is saying. We've got to fight labor. We've got to fight her. It's in fact one quarrel with two wings. And we'll crush them with one answer. We've got to or this world'll go to pot straightaway. If it's got so that a man's got a right to be a man through a woman's right to be a woman. If it's got so that a woman's got a right to be a woman through a man's right to be a man. If that's so then I want to know the reason why. This whole liberty stuff is nonsense. Don't you see how it is? My God! If this keeps up the first thing you know this'll be a liberty world. Look at it honest. Dont you see it yourself? Reason it out in your own mind. Every other consideration will be set aside. Democracy will run homes, business, states, everything. Horrible. This will be a liberty world. And I dont want to live in a liberty world. Pankhurst.

Pankhurst. When I hear you say that word I can tell what you think of yourself. I dont have to ask you for other evidences. Whether you lift your voice or drop it. That tells the whole story. Whether there is any mother in your voice. Whether there is any love in it. You're not dealing here with a person. You're dealing with a race. The person comes and goes. But the new day; it comes and never goes. Now and then the world names a new star. All the glasses are lifted towards the revealed luminary. There's the clamor of those who see it and those who half see it and those who dont see it at all. You cant know Pankhurst by reading the personals in the newspapers. You cant get acquainted with her by taking the stories of her life for what they literally say. She brings all that woman can bring. Then she brings what was before and what is after. If you have the great person theory you'll not understand why she is here and what she has accomplished. But if you have the great race theory the clouds'll wash out of the skies and you'll see the sun. We have long said: Man shall hold no property in man. The women come along now and say: Man shall hold no property in woman. Then I go farther. I go to the end. I say: Man shall hold no property in property. What are you listening for? It's a great voice. Women are not primarily voters. They are women. They are sex. They are mothers. The maternal is speaking up for itself. Votes for women. That's the mere surface of the stream. Souls for women. Bodies for women. That's the far cry. Every woman has a father in her. Every man has a mother in him. That which has been confined. That shall be released. That which has been refused woman. That she demands. That which woman has refused herself. That she will resume. A great flame lit in a vast shadow. That's what it all is. This little woman overflowing with calm vehemence: what is she? Just the mother of two daughters? Just the wife of a dead husband? Just a prisoner in British jails? That's the average of her. But that's not the most of her. She reaches out over the earth. She ceases to be a person. She becomes a presence. She who can be measured becomes the immeasurable. My eyes sweep her inspiring horizons. I follow her lead. Let her go where her feet and her wings take her. Down anywhere, up anywhere. Resisted no matter how, welcomed no matter where. Every mile she travels is sacred to a common trust. Dedicated to a universal purpose. Are you skulking? Do you worry the years away with quibbles? Rather that every atom of property should go up in smoke if the people are left. Rather anything than that the soul should pay the bills of property. When men are victims you say: We are saved. When dollars are victims you say: We are ruined. You can brush aside a man or a woman. But you cant alter the will of the fates. You can turn your back to the sunshine. But you cant stand in the way of the sun. You can take the splash of the sea. But you cant stop it from rolling up the shore. You can lock yourself in your house. But you close the rest of us out. When the man comes what has the woman got to say? When the woman comes what has the man got to say? The answer of the man is found in the woman. The answer of the woman is found in the man. The woman has the floor. She asks her pertinent impertinent questions. She asks whys and wherefores. You exhibit your tax receipts in reply. She asks you what you are. You answer by showing her what you have. You think you shine through what you own. Far from that. You can only shine through what you dont own. This little woman has made all your big fortunes look mean. This little idea has made all your big theories look cheap. Everything else always does look insignificant when a real man or woman comes round. When you shook hands with this woman you more than touched the palms of life and death. When you looked into her eyes you read more than the tablets of Sinai. When you heard her speak words you listened to more than the music of waters and winds. When you measured her and weighed her you tested more than the sizes and shapes of starry universes. The woman comes. Oh man: what has the woman in you got to say of it? The man comes. Oh woman: what has the man in you got to say of it? Pankhurst.

I have met men and women and men and women: they are all sizes: yet they are all one size:

I have never so far met a man or a woman little enough for me to be arrogant with:

I have never so far met a man or a woman big enough for me to humble myself to:

Men and women dont seem to me made to be figured upon: they are made to be immeasurable:

They dont seem to me made to be accepted or rejected: they are made to be my comrades:

We are all so much alike I dont see how we could be different:

We are all so different I don't see how we could fail to be alike:

A few horizons added to a man's dream: do they make one man better than another?

A few inches added to a man's waist: do they make one man superior to another?

From way up these are such minor matters: the wave drops away in the sea:

From way up our castes and borderlines are such minor matters: they lapse away in the soul:

For we are in the end not masters and slaves, not up and down: we are only brothers and sisters.

WHAT IS THE COLOR OF YOUR SKIN?

What is the color of your skin? Are you a child of the sun or a child of the snow? Do you come with red in your face? Or is there a shadow across your head? Are you the white child of a black mother or the black child of a white mother? I see your brown red right hand. How warm it feels to me. I look into your glowing equatorial eyes. How like being led to fathers and mothers that is. You bring me north south east west. You guide yourselves to me. You distribute me among yourselves. I am your child no matter how. Your child no matter where. There are seas everywhere. But there is no sea between us. There are interfering miles of space and hours of time. But they dont break us from each other. I was born of my mother and here I am. You were born of your mothers and there you are. The earth was born of the sun. The sun was born of what? I mix up the elements. I come out one place. You come out another place. From the same mother womb. From the same father seed. To the same brother earth. Do you hold a noose over me? Or drop a sword from above as I pass? Or shoot me down in my tracks? Or pass laws of which I'm the victim? Or lock your housedoors when I knock? My credentials are the same as yours: no better than yours. I am the harvest of the same planting: no more than that harvest. Like you I have one life to live on one earth before I pass on. Do I stand on my icy heritage and freeze the heat out of your love? Remember the stream: go up with it to its sources: go down with it to the sea. Every atom dancing in the light or clouded by the storm advances and retreats in perfect equity and perfect order. Dear prouds and humbles: by God I'm yours and you're mine. Do you believe that anything can take you from me or take me from you? I meet you. I read about you. I am told all the terrible truths. But everything draws me nearer. Nothing drives me away. If you could be less to me than I am to myself then I would have to be more to myself than I could be to you. That would violate my democracy. That would be setting one thing above another. When I elevate myself with all I am a democrat. When I lift myself above the rest I am a tyrant. Listen to me. You who are reading what I write. Maybe you are black. Maybe you are pink or white or yellow. Maybe you are between or across. All that goes with maybe. But when you are my brother there is no maybe to it. If I could look at any man and not see his mother as my own I'd be false to all motherhood. If I could look at any woman and not see her father as my own I'd be false to all fatherhood. I'm not satisfied with one mother. I want all mothers. Nor with one father. I want all fathers. Nor with my children. I want all children. I'm not satisfied with one color. I want all colors. Nor with one race. I want all races. Nor with one language. I want all languages. My hunger is fiercely universal. I'm not fed till I've eaten at every table. I can only know one woman by knowing all women. I can only know one people by knowing all peoples. What is the color of my skin? What is the sound to the song? What is the water to the ocean? That's what the rest of me is to my exterior. That's what the substance in me is to my show. That's what my foundations are to my rooftree. There at the bottom we are together. And at the top: there we are together. We begin together and end together. But we are alienated in the journey. When we start out in the morning we say good by. When we meet again at night we ask: How do you do? What wrenched us apart in the struggle of the pilgrimage? Why should those who are friends before and friends again after be enemies while they travel? I say to the other-colored peoples: You have to be my brothers whether you want to or not, thank God. Do they say to me: You have to be my brother whether you want to or not, thank God? What is the color of your soul? What is the color of your skin?

What is the color of your skin? I see. You are a nigger. You are a damned dago. You are the man on the other side of the wall. The man over somewhere. The yellow peril. The ignorant dirty emigrant. The two for a quarter six for a half dollar mill slave. There is a border line between us. There are incomes between us. There is a whole code of manners between us. You are the godforsaken polack. You are the hooknosed jew. You are the monkeyfaced irishman. You are the beerguzzled deutscher. I call you names. I can't see you. You are in the next yard. The stars look just as well from the next yard. But I insist upon the exclusive astronomy of my own garden. I smell your stale clothes. I am choked by the aromas of your foul kitchens. Would you like your sister to marry an african? I'm not fussy. I'm only a man. A white man. I don't draw lines ferninst you. I only draw lines in favor of myself. Do you mean to say you think these ignoramuses as good as yourself? Do you tell me that you're no better than the herd? Nonsense. There's the nietzschean word for it. The average man is the herd. The awkward big-fisted loon. The idiot crowd. The people everybody kicks. The folks everybody despises. The men women children you wouldn't invite into your home. I use them. Ride them. Make money off them. But that's all I want of them. Just the robber money. Not the man love. Look at them filing to work tired to start with. Look at them filing back from work like a funeral nearly dead to end with. They're a rum lot. They're worth a hundred cents on the dollar and up in the labor market. They're worth about ten cents on the dollar and under on the social plane. My God! but they're a scabby bunch. It makes me sick to see them. Look at them as they work their treadmill. Don't they give themselves away? Right and left, north and south, look where you choose: they are the slobbering tobaccoey stay-behinds and passbacks of the dumpheap. Every mother's son of 'em useful to me maybe but useless to themselves. Down in their luck, to be sure. But sentenced for life just the same. The jackjohnsons of society. The refuse of birth and death. The clods. The dullards. The heavyfooted and heavyheaded bowlegs and knock-knees. The slave asses yoked to an inescapable burden. Who are you that you dont belong? Are you of us few or of their very many? Are you of the interest bearing rent collecting profit class or do you fester in these maggoty bottoms of fate? Stay where you fall no matter how far down you are. Dont try to climb. We shove you all over the cliff again. We throw dust in your eyes. We confuse you in clouds of verbiage. We disarm you. We have laws to make you afraid. We have creeds to make you hopeless. We have poets who kill you with pensive despairs. Do you dare aspire to anything? Stay where you are in your deep mud. There is no above to you. No beyond. No ease. No dreamworld. You were condemned before you were born. You remain condemned while you live. And you will continue condemned when you become the dung in the barnyard at last. A woman heard me expressing my race faith. She asked me: "How would you like to have a grandchild with a black skin?" That was it. That was the whole devilish poisonous story. The entire problem prejudice in a nutshell. She didn't ask: How would you like to have a grandchild with a black soul? That would have meant something. But she wasn't interested in souls. She was interested in skins. How would I like to have a grandchild with a black skin. What is the color of your skin?

What is the color of your skin? Maybe you have a black skin and a white heart. Maybe you have a white skin and a black heart. I dont know. We talk about the yellow peril when we think of Asia. And we talk about the brown peril when we think of Italy. And we talk about the black peril when we think of South Carolina. But all of us are afraid to talk of the white peril. I see no perils. My arms reach out to all. I want the Chinaman to possess himself of the earth if he's an earth man. Let him freely pass right and left testing himself and us. Dont put up pennywise barriers built on poundfoolish laws. Rather do anything than stop your fraternities short of the total census of man. Every interfering sea, every contradicting statute, every counterchecking prejudice, every adventure in money-making, that nullifies the international inference is a slap in the face of brotherhood. Damn up the human stream. Then you damn down the soul. The old negro mammy in Georgia asked me as I left: Will you do something for me? I said: Yes, if you'll do something for me? She asked: Will you kiss me good by? I said: Yes--on condition that you kiss me good by. I would only be worthy to take if I was worthy to give. I'd say to all the world: I would only be worthy of loving if I was worthy of being loved. I would only be worthy of being an American if I was worthy of being a Jap. I would only be worthy of serving if I was worthy of being served. I would only cease being a peril if I ceased calling others perilous. How could I be worthy of being a white man if I was too good to be a black man? Ethiopia cries out loud to Scandinavia. India cries out loud to England. All the peoples cry out loud from everywhere to all the peoples. There is no peril in peoples. There is only peril in you and me. There is no peril in anything that brings any of us together. There is only peril in what keeps us or drives us apart. I go with mothers fathers children. I go with birth and death. I go with dreaming and believing. I go with mixing and mating. These are the same everywhere. The same with you black and me white. The same with my skin burnt to fire and the same with your skin frozen to the whiteness of snow. The same with duskies and palefaces. I dont go with maps. With geographies. With diplomacies. With kingdoms and republics. With genius aristocracy pauperism. With success and the main chance. I only go with people. With folks. And with them I go anywhere they go. Into any hell or any heaven. Into any hope or any despair. With people. Where people go I may go too. But where people are refused there I am shut out. The woman asked me: Would you like to have a grandchild with a black skin? She brought her question to the wrong court. She should not have addressed it to me. She should have taken it to God. Would God like to have a grandchild with a black skin? It's as though we asked God: What would you think of yourself if you happened to be black or red? What is the color of your soul? What is the color of your skin?

O you despairers of destiny! O you plunderers of time! you make a great noise in the silences:

All that you need to do is to open your eyes: that is the secret: look:

You come to me; I cant look for you: I can only say, look:

I cant give you a free pass to the promised land: I can only say look: if you only look you will need no pass:

O, why do you bury your face in the dust? get up: lift yourself high enough to look over your own head:

Everything you love is yours.

YOU WRITERS