detention home on the weekends with Lucille.
I noticed again how white people smelled different from us, and how their food tasted different,
not seasoned like Negro cooking. I began to sweep and mop and dust around in the Swerlins'
house, as I had done with Big Boy at the Gohannases'.
They all liked my attitude, and it was out of their liking for me that I soon became accepted by
them-as a mascot, I know now. They would talk about anything and everything with me standing
right there hearing them, the same way people would talk freely in front of a pet canary. They
would even talk about me, or about "niggers," as though I wasn't there, as if I wouldn't understand
what the word meant. A hundred times a day, they used the word "nigger." I suppose that in their
own minds, they meant no harm; in fact they probably meant well. It was the same with the cook,
Lucille, and her husband, Duane. I remember one day when Mr. Swerlin, as nice as he was,
came in from Lansing, where he had been through the Negro section, and said to Mrs. Swerlin
right in front of me, "I just can't see how those niggers can be so happy and be so poor." He
talked about how they lived in shacks, but had those big, shining cars out front.
And Mrs. Swerlin said, me standing right there, "Niggers are just that way... ." That scene always
stayed with me.
It was the same with the other white people, most of them local politicians, when they would
come visiting the Swerlins. One of their favorite parlor topics was "niggers." One of them was the
judge who was in charge of me in Lansing. He was a close friend of the Swerlins. He would ask
about me when he came, and they would call me in, and he would look me up and down, his
expression approving, like he was examining a fine colt, or a pedigreed pup. I knew they must
have told him how I acted and how I worked.
What I am trying to say is that it just never dawned upon them that I could understand, that I
wasn't a pet, but a human being. They didn't give me credit for having the same sensitivity,
intellect, and understanding that they would have been ready and willing to recognize in a white
boy in my position. But it has historically been the case with white people, in their regard for black
people, that even though we might be with them, we weren't considered of them. Even though
they appeared to have opened the door, it was still closed. Thus they never did really see me.
This is the sort of kindly condescension which I try to clarify today, to these integration-hungry
Negroes, about their "liberal" white friends, these so-called "good white people"-most of them
anyway. I don't care how nice one is to you; the thing you must always remember is that almost
never does he really see you as he sees himself, as he sees his own kind. He may stand with you
through thin, but not thick; when the chips are down, you'll find that as fixed in him as his bone
structure is his sometimes subconscious conviction that he's better than anybody black.
But I was no more than vaguely aware of anything like that in my detention-home years. I did my
little chores around the house, and everything was fine. And each weekend, they didn't mind my
catching a ride over to Lansing for the afternoon or evening. If I wasn't old enough, I sure was big
enough by then, and nobody ever questioned my hanging out, even at night, in the streets of the
Negro section.
I was growing up to be even bigger than Wilfred and Philbert, who had begunto meet girls at the
school dances, and other places, and introduced me to a few. But the ones who seemed to like
me, I didn't go for-and vice versa. I couldn't dance a lick, anyway, and I couldn't see squandering
my few dimes on girls. So mostly I pleasured myself these Saturday nights by gawking around
the Negro bars and restaurants. The jukeboxes were wailing Erskine Hawkins' "Tuxedo Junction,"
Slim and Slam's "Flatfoot Floogie," things like that. Sometimes, big bands from New York, out
touring the one-night stands in the sticks, would play for big dances in Lansing. Everybody with
legs would come out to see any performer who bore the magic name "New York." Which is how I
first heard Lucky Thompson and Milt Jackson, both of whom I later got to know well in Harlem.
Many youngsters from the detention home, when their dates came up, went off to the reform
school. But when mine came up-two or three times-it was always ignored. I saw new youngsters
arrive and leave. I was glad and grateful. I knew it was Mrs. Swerlin's doing. I didn't want to leave.
She finally told me one day that I was going to be entered in Mason Junior High School. It was
the only school in town. No ward of the detention home had ever gone to school there, at least
darsice
(darsice)
#1