Color Blind

Color Blind is Margaret Halsey’s in exhaustive but highly conclusive way of discussing the race problem in America. She has perceived that it is useless to try to persuade all of us simultaneously to the really democratic way of life. Consequently she lias addressed her very readable exposition to that large group of white Americans who sit remotely on high, intellectual fences, acknowledging the injustice and the dangers to civilization in racial discrimination, but who arc too paralyzed by social maladroitness and their fantasies regarding Negro Americans ever to conic down to the places where these people arc, and where democracy is fighting without pause for its life. She tells us, with deeply realistic conviction, that the improvement of race relations in this country is “not a matter of a few people having a great deal of courage. If is a matter of a great many people having just a little courage.”

As captain of a group of hostesses in an interracial canteen for servicemen during the war, Miss Halsey was involved in a difficult and challenging experience and, for all her familiar skill at provoking chuckles, has emerged from this experience a wiser and graver person. Clearly, she is no impractical zealot urging all in our land to embrace some flamboyant Faith and to follow some distant Gleam.

One of the major clues revealing Miss Halsey’s maturity in the practice of what she so eloquently preaches is her recognition that in the day-to-day living of a democrat ically honest life there must be room for choice, even for those people whose choices we hate; and that attempting to understand the point of view of one’s opponent is eminent ly more productive than clubbing him over the head with one’s own self-righteousness or choking even valid morality down his unwilling throat. For her pains, assuredly, Miss Halsey will give new courage to those who serve on the race relations front. She will perhaps unseat some fencesitters and, because she is right, will be as venomously hated by the guilty as ever. These are the rewards for all people who speak out when they know what they are talking about.

JOHN CASWELL SMITH, JR.