One thing that causes black people to wake up sweating in the night is whether white people mean what they say.

If you listen closely, a lot of the dialogue among black people boils down to, “White people say they don’t mind me marrying their daughter, but what are they really THINKING?”

I would be humiliated if I worried about something like that. Your opinion is your own. Just don’t keep me from doing what I want to do.

But it is a major, and openly declared, concern of non-whites: What does this white person REALLY think of me?

If I worried that much, in public, about what non-whites think of me I would be a candidate for psychiatric care.

The healthy attitude among Americans has always been to insist that other people let me do what I want to do. What they THINK about what I want to do is not my concern.

Not only do other people have the right to disapprove of me, they have the right to SAY they disapprove of me.

But the modern doctrine says that whites must not only consent, they must APPROVE, right down to their toenails.

A movie showed Alan Alda as an idealistic and, therefore, liberal United States Senator. One of the high points of the movie was when he was on a Senate Committee and an old Southerner was testifying before it. The Idealist, played by Mr. Alda, brought out a quote from a private conversation the old Southerner had had in which he said he was STILL for segregation.

The old Southerner had consented to integration, but he had not, down to his toenails, APPROVED of it.

Now if that revelation had been that, in a private conversation, a LEFTIST had said he was a good Stalinst and he was STILL a good Stalinist, the Idealist would have denounced that revelation as McCarthyism.

But it never occurred to those producing the movie that the revelation that an old segregationist was still at heart a segregationist was anything but Idealism in Action.

It is nowhere near enough that a white person ALLOWS non-whites to do as they wish. The white person must be totally converted. He must WANT the colored guy to marry his daughter.

It is very hard to explain the obvious to people. The simple fact that nothing could be more humiliating to a non-whites than worrying about what a white person THINKS of him is totally beyond the understanding of non-whites.

I have tried to explain it to them. I might as well be speaking in Ancient Greek.