“ Furthermore, all black Americans are born into a society which is determined—repeat, determined—that they shall never learn the truth about themselves or their society, which is determined that black men shall use as their only frame of reference what white Americans convey to them of their own potentialities, and of the shape, size, dimensions, and possibilities of the world. And I do not hesitate for an instant to condemn this as a crime. To persuade black boys and girls, as we have for so many generations, that their lives are worth less than other lives, and that they can live only on terms dictated to them by other people, by people who despise them, is worse than a crime.

“ The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.

“ People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.

“ What white people have to do is try to find out, in their own hearts, why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place….because I’m not a nigger, I’m a man, but if you think im a nigger, it means you need it…and you have to find out why. The future of the country depends on that.

“ whites want black writers to mostly deliver something as if it were an official version of the black experience. But the vocabulary won’t hold it, simply. No true account really of black life can be held, can be contained, in the American vocabulary. As it is, the only way that you can deal with it is by doing great violence to the assumptions on which the vocabulary is based.

“ I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.