There are black people here – does their breathing worry you – I mean the way they move, for example, just like human beings? Do you find them disturbing? Are you sick of their demands? Does it trouble you to see them marching in the streets and making speeches with their feet you may not care to hear?

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They are everywhere it seems. It makes me wonder – do you hate the way they sing? Does it make you tense to recall how they crossed over the sea and came through the drought and walked through the rain and traveled all this way through fire and ice, through slavery and pain, to stand before you face to face? 

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You seem angry and uptight. Why are you so frightened? Does it fill you with fury to see the way they gather in the blue flickering tube of your enormous solitude and stare at you with disbelief, with amazement and scorn?

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When you watch them on TV at night and see them counting up their dead, does it shock you to notice how the bread between their teeth is neither black nor white, but red with the blood of their brothers and sisters?

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Tell me the truth: Can you handle their success? Can you reckon with their savvy? Does it worry you to death? Does it make your trigger finger itch to find them racing past your daily news, their intellects a warning sign to let you know your time is up – to let you know that you are shackled to a dying past?

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The dark appearance of your dread has traveled all this way through history to tell you that your vitriol is wasted breath. The minstrel show has come and gone. The people you despise have lived too long with sudden death to contemplate surrender. They have mastered the art of survival. They will never go away. They are splendid in their rigor. They have walked across the river. They are organized and ready. They are here to seize the day.