RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

138 | denis beckett
nose in your privilege?” she shouted. I said I was demonstrating
what citizenship was about. She should be able to do the
same, but she wasn’t going to do it in a hurry by waiting for
a revolution to break out. even if she got her revolution she’d
wind up, when she phoned, if the phone worked, and if it was
answered, speaking to someone appointed for services to the
cause instead of qualities for the job, who’d write her address
wrong and wouldn’t have a light-fixer to send, or a light-bulb.
We had the fiercest argument ever, and in my view NomaV
turned a corner. I dunno if she’d agree/admit.
corner-turning was rare all round. If you speak to a group
for 40 minutes you may adjust the lines of their thought-tracks,
but I don’t think you’re about to install new tracks, and I learnt
that this was what I was trying to do.
among politically-minded black groups, there was enormous
disgust of reassurances to the whites. Partly of course there was
the (dumb) idea that whites must just bugger off. More, there
was the (fair) smell of insult coming up, another variation of
half-liberation. There’s a wall of gut resistance. a guy wants to
be a citizen, complete, not a semi-citizen granted his status on
condition he doesn’t use it in ways which offend the white man.
To me all the reassurance formulas belonged in the dustbin;
all the special powers for minorities, all the appeals for promises
of future good behaviour. Just let liberation go further than was
sought, to be chained to the people for whom it spoke. But
this was perhaps a bit much to wrap the mind around in 40
minutes, especially to people convinced that “black interests”
and “white interests” were distinct and opposing entities.
“Non-political” black audiences had a different problem.
They’d hear me to be saying that the lives they wanted were
within reach, and would get excited as well as mystified. They’d
say, “So what do we do now”, and I’d say, “Well, it requires the
developing and floating of an improved concept of liberation”,
and as I was saying it I’d know it was hopeless. People wanted
the crisp and concrete, not a vague injunction to change a
nation’s thinking.