Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

°prisoner begging to be freed, and
then disappeared .
No one had slipped me any acid .
I knew nothing about mysticism.
I'd been an atheist since I was 12 .
So there were limited ways for me
to interpret all this . First, I asked
myself, do other people perceive
the way I perceive now, or do they
perceive the way I used to perceive?
I watched them for a while,
and concluded that they only perceive
the lying masks, but they do
not know that they are lying . The
masks were the limits of their consciousness
. And their only way of
knowing what goes on in the world
is what the masks tell each other .
No one else whom I could observe
was perceiving like me . The lying
masks were interacting with each
other and arriving at a consensus
which they accepted as reality . And
people were acting on the basis of
this consensus . My impression was
that very little of what existed in
the real world got past the masks.
I concluded that either I was
crazy, and they were all sane, or I
was sane and they were all crazy.
I had no way of knowing for sure .
So I decided to test it out . While
being very careful not to say or do
anything that would get me locked
up, I would operate on the basis of
'the reality which I perceived, and
observe others operating upon the
basis ofthe reality which they perceived,
and see whose reality was
more reliable .
I found myself back in New
York in 1964, among familiar
60
places and people, really perceiving
them all for the first time . I couldn't
play their games anymore . I longed
desperately to escape from the circles
I had always moved in and to
try out my new perceptions on the
world out there .
I went to the college for the interview.
The president explained
to me that they had only been hiring
white teachers for a year . The
Board was afraid that any white
teacher who would come there
would be a communist . They hired
Chinese, and East Indians . But,
alas, they couldn't get enough
teachers of any race, and finally the
Board permitted him to hire a few
whites.
He asked me, "Is there anything
you have to tell me? I might as well
know it now."
"Yes, there is . My kids are
black."
"Are they adopted?"
"No, they're my natural children
."
"I have some relatives who look
as white as you do ."
"I have often been taken for a
creole . I'm from New Orleans . I
speak French."
"Whatever I say around here
reaches all ears . I could say, `Have
you met our new creole history
teacher from New Orleans?' "
"That's fine with me ."
"When you get your drivers' license,
be sure they get the race
right."
All the teachers, except one, believed
it . Some of them even began
Morch 1969 NEGRO DIGEST