Notes

TodayÂ’s entry in the diary is another example of the lust and lewdness of the white man, for whom his age or his image is no barrier. An elderly, white man, already a grandfather, informs the author how all white men craved colored girls and how he too had taken every Negro girl before they started working for him. These women adhere to his demands, as they need money to feed their kids. The appalling attitude of the whites is once again highlighted here as they think that they are actually doing a favor to the Negroes by getting some white blood in their kids. One more white, inhuman hypocrite! This elderly white man, like the others, is not just lecherous, but also mercilessly cruel as he threatens the author that if he stirs up any trouble he will be jailed or killed. This entry is about white privileges under racism, how one can merrily sexually abuse Negro women and also brazenly murder a Negro and toss him into a swamp and get away. As the author listens to this man he imagines how this man maybe when he is with his family. Griffin is sure that he never exposes this wretched side of his nature to his family. They see only his gentle nature.

The next part is one more example of white racism when the author wants to buy some food and drink and is at first refused, but later served by the white owners, only for the moneyÂ’s sake.

The authorÂ’s description of his experience with the Negro saw mill worker is heart warming amidst all this cold, hard and bitter racism. The young Negro saw mill worker not only welcomes the author to stay the night with him, his wife and six kids in their two-room rickety, cramped shanty, but all eight of them also treat him with warmth and exquisite courtesy, reminding him of his family.

Then the author symbolically moves into another plane, that of nature and its relationship to man. On that lonely night, he feels more profoundly than ever, the totality of his Negro-ness and the immensity of its isolating effects. The contrast between the white boy reading a book about Negroes in the safety of his white living room and an old Negro man in the Alabama swamps, becomes even more striking. He thinks about his children asleep in their clean beds in a warm house while he, their father, a bald headed old Negro is sitting in the swamps and weeping softly so that the Negro children do not wake up. He recalls the Negro childrenÂ’s lips soft and tender against his, like the night around, and so very similar to the feel of his own childrenÂ’s good night kisses. This part poignantly reveals how everything is the same for a sensitive human parent, be he Negro or white.

The next part of the diary very acutely and sharply describes the mental and verbal gymnastics of racism -- how the white racist has masterfully denied the Negro a sense of his personal value, his human dignity and even his honor. It shows how the racistsÂ’ claim about the NegroÂ’s lack of sexual morality and his intellectual incapacity -- are actually smoke screens to justify his own racist bigotry and unethical behavior. Scientific studies show how the middle-class Negro has the same family culture, the same ideals and goals as his white counterpart. How the NegroÂ’s lower academic performance springs not from his racial heredity, but from being deprived of cultural and educational advantages by the whites. So as long as the Negro is kept in tenth rate schools he will remain scholastically behind white children -- circumstances and the environment determine his fate and destiny.

The final part of the dayÂ’s entry is the author fondly telephoning his wife and kids back home and his feelings as father and husband. However since he is doing it as a Negro, the strangeness and peculiarity of the situation is very strikingly described.

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