Now I, as a matter of aesthetic beauty, prefer your brown-velvet color to a jaundiced yellow, or even an uncertain cream; but the world doesn’t.”
“The world?”
‚ÄúYes, the world; and especially America. One may be Chinese, Spaniard, even Indian‚ÅÝ‚Äîanything white or dirty white in this land, and demand decent treatment; but to be Negro or darkening toward it unmistakably means perpetual handicap and crucifixion.‚Äù
“Why not, then, admit that you draw the color-line?”
“Because I don’t; but the world does. I am not prejudiced as my parents were, but I am foresighted. Indeed, it is a deep ethical query, is it not, how far one has the right to bear black children to the world