Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

VICE VERSA 195
Mushidi retorts that ''Slave blood is bad blood." On
the surface, certainly, he is right, for all who have worked
among slaves know that bondage of body induces also
bondage of brain. That is to say, as the slave has been
valued only as a current coin in commerce, he fatalistically
accepts the valuation and really becomes as dead and
metallic to all human susceptibilities as a literal coin.
Why then be surprised ? Men who have no rights
cannot justifiably be complained of for having any
wrongs. Yet hundreds of African travellers have ignored
this negro truism and slandered the slave because his
degrading status has degraded likewise his state. It is
ridiculous for a man to go and treat a negro as though he
were a demon, and then express surprise that he is not
an angel. Even we Missionaries are reaping the harvest
of this oppression, for the worst type of convert is a
redeemed slave. The man is still in a fog, and has not
yet shaken oflf the chattel idea even in the glorious idea
of the Gospel. Is this the reason why Gordon of
Khartoum was betrayed by the two men he had recently
released from captivity ? Who threw the bomb that
killed the Czar Alexander ? Who, if not a liberated
slave ? And if you breed slavery in the bone for centuries,
how can you annul it all by the cash payment of an hour ?
There is a magic key even for this lock, however, and it
is found in the fact that the only way to open another
man's heart is by opening yours to him. I find that the
message that comes from the heart will contrive to reach
other hearts. So literally is he a mere captive coin that,