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LE ROI JONES AND NEW WRITERS            JACKSON

etc.) in this country can afford...the luxury of hate. [For] they certainly have had enough to hate."10 In this same letter, Jones warns the reader and Feiffer that there are many Negroes who are no longer willing to adhere to the philosophy of non-violence. For they have seen that by attempting to live non-violently for 300 years, they are still getting their heads bashed in and their homes and churches bombed by the white man. So finally, he tells Feiffer and all white liberals to cease advising Black people how they should go about obtaining their freedom; and to abandon the teasing call of moderation. 

In his essay on "tokenism," LeRoi Jones quotes Time magazine: "Never has the Negro been able to purchase so much and never has he owned so much, free and clear." He points out the irony of this statement by remarking: "That is everything but his soul. It is not 'progress' that the majority of Negroes want, but Freedom.11  And freedom should be what all Americans should be seeking; not a new car each year; or wall-to-wall carpeting; or any of the covering luxuries which becloud the real human issues and questions of finding one's being and one's identity in the madness of the 20th century. The author writes with poignancy when he asks the reader: 

Is it an excess for a man to ask to be free? To declare, even vehemently, that no man has the right to dictate the life of another man? Is it so radical and untoward for nations to claim the right of self-determination? Freedom now! has become the cry of a great many American Negroes and colonial nations. Not freedom "when you get ready to give it" as some spurious privilege or shabby act of charity; but now!12

Finally, after seemingly being exasperated by rationally attempting to explain why the black man and all oppressed people desire nothing more than their manly freedom, Jones almost screams through the pages when he exclaims: 

A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom. My God, what makes a black man in America or Africa, or any of the other oppressed colonial peoples of the world, less ready for freedom than the average Daily News reading American white man?

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-15 11:15:51 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-15 13:31:39