IS IT HAPPENING HERE?
Mayer, Milton
Is It Happening Here? By MILTON MAYER THE Jews were about one per cent of the German population. The Negroes are about 10 per cent of ours. The Nazis thought that nobody would kick up much of a...
...But their hell-raising takes a direction most likely to be sanctioned by their parents...
...A 10 per cent minority, when it is desperate, is a genuine threat...
...and when the Negroes become as cruel as the whites are now, the blood will flow over the boundary both ways, and what will become of the world I was trying to build before Hitler...
...They have got to blow up in the faces of the White Protestant Right-Handed Property-owning Americans, but the property owners seem to be confident that the boundary of the ghetto can be held...
...I wonder if it can, when the Negroes, who, up to now, have been patient and hopeful, grow desperate...
...The restrictionists were shouting that the anti-restrictionists were Communists and whispering that they were Jews...
...The meeting I attended was, as I say, sponsored by the anti-restrictionists, including the usual Commies, and the feeling was tense...
...We seem to suppose that we can get by with the enslavement of 10 per cent, but I wonder if we aren't miscalculating...
...But is it...
...The kids are just out to raise hell...
...Silly people in large numbers seem to be coming up out of the ground...
...the Nazis and the Bolsheviks were both less than that when they threatened the status quo in Germany and Russia...
...The Daughters of the American Revolution worry me, too...
...But the head man of the restrictionists—think of it—is a Jew, who would rather lose his soul than his property...
...the Jews were helpless, and nobody lifted a finger for them...
...PROPERTY owners are silly, too, just like high school kids and the D.A.R., but the other night I attended a mass meeting called on Chicago's South Side to fight against restrictive covenants, which are property owners' private agreements not to sell or rent to Negroes, and the meeting worried me...
...Nobody hit anybody, but the coppers who stood at the back of the hall looked grim, and so did I. * * * AS a White Prptestant Left-Handed Property-Owning American, I am worried...
...But the later rounds will be terrible, because by that time the 10 per cent, whose allies are two-thirds of the world's population, will have become impatient and hopeless...
...The Daughters said they were simply observing "the custom of the District of Columbia...
...AS a White Protestant American, I should very much like to see the continued enslavement of the American Negroes, just as I would like to see, from my view point as a southpaw, the enslavement of all right-handed people everywhere...
...This is indeed the case, but the Negroes are 10 per cent of our population, and they may not enjoy being the victims of customary fascism any more than the Jews, who were a helpless one per cent, enjoyed being the victims of legal fascism...
...I am worse than worried ; I am scared, scared not of losing my skin, which I shed every Springtime anyway, but of losing my world...
...The terrifying thing about the meeting—as it is about the high school strikes and the D.A.R.—is that we always assume that the social fabric is strong enough to withstand these strains...
...My only worry is whether we White Protestant Left-Handed Americans can get away with it...
...Now the Daughters are traditionally silly, but, then, so are the high school kids...
...So the high school strikes worry me...
...High school kids in Gary, Chicago, and New York have gone on strike against the admission of Negro kids to the schools they attend...
...In the first rounds of the war to preserve fascism-by-custom, I think there is no doubt that the Right-Handed Whites will win...
...The Nazis thought that nobody would kick up much of a row over the enslavement of one per cent, and they were right...
...I had the sense of witnessing clearly taken sides at the meeting—our side against their side—and no hope at all of moderation...
...These kids do not—contrary to the delirious view of the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee—represent the work of a fascist conspiracy by the steel companies and the packing houses...
...More terrifying still, as I view the matter from the standpoint of a White Protestant American, is the fact that the Jews of the whole world, if they had rallied to the Jewish cause in Germany, would have been much less than one per cent of the world's population, while the Negroes of the world, including the yellow Negroes, are something like two-thirds of the world's population...
...And I had more than just a sense that our side—as well as their side—had the hall well sprinkled with thugs...
...With the Negroes and the right-handed people enslaved in a shrinking job market, my chances of getting and keeping a job would improve...
...And will it be when the boom goes boom...
...His soul is gone and, since he's a Jew, or White Negro, his property will go when the shooting starts...
...It seems that Chicago's South Side Negro section has, in places, a population density greater than Calcutta's...
...True, the high school kids of Stevens Point, Wis., threatened to picket the local movie house if it didn't reduce its prices...
...Isolated events of the last few weeks have me worried...
...They have just reaffirmed their policy of refusing the use of Constitution Hall, which they own, to Negroes...
...Black men's blood, already well shed for the Four Freedoms, will run in the gutters that mark the boundary of the ghetto of Chicago's South Side...
...If the Negroes can't expand, they have got to blow up...
Vol. 9 • October 1945 • No. 42
