THE AMERICAN CHANCE
Mayer, Milton
The American Chance By MILTON MAYER IT WAS on a slow train from Washington to Chicago, in the dining car. The diner, at the moment, wasn't crowded. The waiter across the aisle was an old-time...
...If not now, why ever...
...Where's The Hitch...
...The old-timey, grizzled-poll, eight-ball waiter across the aisle should have been talking the way the Hampden boy was talking to me, and vice versa...
...Now death is a pretty big order, and people expected to die may be expected to ask, "What for...
...That, I think, is what has happened to the old-timey Negro in the dining-car...
...Americans can fight Germans, but only democracy can fight fascism...
...And so he was miserable, and mad, and was saying things he shouldn't...
...Or, let's try to get this straight...
...The American chance has turned out to be the American necessity...
...No, not just Germany...
...It is no longer something for someday...
...But when war came he heard, from his country, that left-overs wasn't his lot at all...
...his lot was freedom and equality, and who could object to dying for them...
...And the Jim Crow cars go right on rolling by, and the profits go right on rolling up...
...He found himself seduced by—let us not say "bribed by"—hopes he had never dared to have...
...It is no longer a very good ideal and only a pretty good practice...
...The Negro and the white man and the Jew and the Gentile and the worker and the boss are all better off here, in the United States of America, than they would be anywhere else in the peacetime world, Switzerland, Denmark, and maybe the rest of Scandinavia excepted...
...The slogans are the slogans of a really new world, and a really new world, never promised in peacetime, is no less than people once satisfied want...
...The waiter at my table was different...
...I know what he had been hearing, and the young Negro too...
...He shouldn't talk like that," said my waiter softly...
...Just when do you pay off...
...Fascism compels us to fight for democracy or to win a wingless victory...
...Where's the hitch...
...What was the old Negro doing monkeying around with dire omens and radical propaganda...
...left-overs, he knew, was his lot...
...Then what's the beef about, if our ideals and our practices are so much better than those of the Nazis...
...If you can pay off tomorrow, why not pay off today ? After all, you know, tomorrow we die...
...Now we have the promises...
...He was simple, the old Negro...
...We always had the hope...
...So is the white man...
...Give up their lives, which are very good, for a country which is pretty good...
...What's the catch...
...He'd been hearing about democracy and freedom and what 'we are fighting this war for and why the Nazis are bad...
...And getting better off all the time, by slow and hard-fought stages...
...He believed what he heard...
...No'm," he was saying, jerking his thumb in the direction of- a passing Jim Crow troop train, "no'm, they ain't a-gonna like it...
...In a word, the kind you expect...
...If not now, why then...
...And then the engineer lost interest in the train, or maybe just had to scratch his stomach, and everything went on the floor in a scandalous jerk...
...or for serfdom, which is better than slavery...
...What he saw, when the Jim Crow troop train went by, was not what he'd heard...
...a graduate, as he himself informed me, of Hampden Institute...
...If you'll die for your country, we'll make it the best damn country you ever saw...
...the kind you hear is coming up in the world...
...The Two Negroes My waiter, the Hampden-ripe-olive boy, bent over me...
...Since we have to fight all-out fascism, we are asking for all-out democracy...
...the kind you expect to bow and scrape and grin and please and never ask for anything but a little of the white folks' left-overs...
...The lady was not attentive...
...a very good-looking lady, I might say as shouldn't...
...A-gonna like what...
...And the conversation, on both sides of the aisle, was over...
...So he proceeded to have them...
...A couple of centuries ago even oligarchy looked good to mankind...
...In terms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the U. S. of A. is just about tops in all of history and in all of the world...
...I hope I do not offend you if I say that Switzerland, Denmark, and maybe the rest of Scandinavia might be just a teeny bit better...
...And then the smile gets a little bit quizzical...
...The young Negro was smart, like us...
...You heard me...
...A-gonna like what they finds when they comes back and finds that they can't even vote and can't do a lot of other things...
...Four Freedoms, four cars in every garage, and four pair of pants with a suit...
...the kind that's supposed to want, not leftovers, but equal shares...
...It is not enough to fight and die for shanties, even pretty good shanties...
...He knows why not now, and he knows that not now means not then and not ever, or at least not ever in his time...
...He thinks the simple old Negro oughtn't to listen to the promises that make men die...
...I don't know," he went on, "I don't know what makes him talk like that...
...they ask...
...And what was the educated Negro doing handing out old-timey stuff about how people shouldn't open their mouths...
...Where does the old Negro waiter across the aisle get his squawk...
...What for...
...A smile overspreads the phizzes of those who are about to die...
...But I report the conversations verbatim...
...They shouldn't do it...
...The Negro is better off here than he would be in Germany...
...tyranny was the rule...
...Just Germany...
...What had the old Negro been "hearing...
...The Promises Of War Here's where, and what, and why: War, unlike peace, asks people to die for their country...
...The way was slow and hard, and we went slowly, hardly, and not too complainingly on our way...
...The American chance is no longer slow and remote...
...Better off, hell—he's well off...
...The waiter across the aisle was an old-time Negro, white fuzz on his head and all...
...The young Negro, from Hampden Institute, was ashamed of him...
...He'd been hearing things, too, but, like us, he didn't believe them...
...Now let's get this straight...
...Why wasn't the old Negro humming, "Swing Low," and the young Negro beating his breast for racial equality...
...Now that," tHey say, "is more like it...
...spruce, bright-eyed-erect...
...But his colleague is simple...
...And that isn't bad...
...He thinks that his colleague ought to know better and keep his mouth shut...
...He was the kind you wouldn't expect...
...Before the war he took left-overs and liked them...
...We have got to fight now for more than we wanted to, and we have got to win more than we had...
...And then he found himself, to his own amazement, saying, "Why not now...
...It doesn't much appeal to them, this exchange of very good for pretty good...
...I am not sure we can preserve it that way, but that is another question...
...So we whip ourselves into a lather and begin to make promises...
...You never have to ask people what they're expected to live for, and they seldom ask themselves...
...What was going on here...
...The Hampden graduate knows better...
...The Negro is better off, and so is the Jew and the worker and everyone else...
...said the lady, not too attentively...
...I was very attentive...
...What we have here is an oligarchy so pervaded by democracy that we can honestly call it an oligarchical democracy...
...I was very attentive...
...They is," said the old-timey waiter, more loudly, "they is a-gonna be plenty of trouble...
...All he knew was what he'd heard, about democracy and freedom and what we are fighting for and why the Nazis are bad...
...And the quizzical smile begins to unkink...
...He always believed what he heard and what he saw...
...Some of these old colored people have been hearing things, and they're talking like that...
...Yes, sir...
...She wasn't paying him much attention, and the fact that an old-timey Negro was talking to a lady who wasn't paying him much attention was enough, in itself, to catch my ear...
...What we have here is pretty .good...
...Why the complaints to the management...
...Why aren't we fighting this war like a crusade instead of a job...
...The old-timey Negro across the aisle was talking to the lady...
...I was attentive to the point of hypnosis...
...Hope deferred is not enough to make men go allrout...
...The simple old Negro didn't know the Cur-zon Line from Prime Minister Curtin...
...The simple old Negro thought that they all meant what they said...
...young and domestic-ripe-olive in hue...
...What we have here is worth fighting for and dying for...
...The simple old Negro didn't know anything about Teheran, Tito, de Gaulle, or Badoglio...
...My eye was already caught...
...But war against fascism demanded a change in promises and pace...
...Hopes Deferred Aren't Enough The American chance has always been the Four Freedoms, everywhere in the world but certainly, and > easiest, here in America...
...We have got to have the pay-off...
Vol. 8 • May 1944 • No. 22
