◆ SpookStack

other immediate cause, to the refusal of the majority of defense industries to employ colored labor on anything like -_ Oo ee an -equal- basis -with-white-labor-—To-the-colored—American a — _ this is final proof of the hopelessness of his plight, that even: 0 eS in the defense of his country he is not allowed his share of work, : ; Segregation Curbs Patriotism _ And yet it may be a mistake to say that this denial of the chance at jobs is more to blame than the resolute segregation : oo in the Army or the practical linfitation in the Navy. The cos now really wants to see his country a democracy. When he defends the United States of America he does not want-to Some do so segregated and limited. This contradicts his idea of _ a democracy. He has grown up a good deal since the World : War. And he has not forgotten that war. He is willing to , oe fight and die again, but not for something he does not possess anyway. The white American is conscious of this feeling now seeth- ing and mounting in the hearts of his colored countrymen. But the white American sedulously avoids acknowledging or indeed even facing it. With the same curious blindness which none of us could understand in France, we white Americans avoid the reality in our own country. We do not want to discover the real truth about the colored American, which is that our race prejudice denies him democracy: We refuse to face it because we do not want to change the status of the colored person. We wish to keep him the servant of the white man. 15 a