QUOTE : You give me this advantage: that whereas you have never had to look at me, because you’ve sealed me away along with sin and hell and death and all the other things you didn’t want to look at, including love, my life was in your hands, and I had to look at you. I know more about you, therefore, than you know about me. I’ve had to spend my life, after all—and all the other Negroes in the country have had to spend their lives—outwitting and watching white people. I had to know what you were doing before you did it. People talk about the new Negro, but he’s been coming for three hundred years. The country thinks he’s new because they’ve never had to look at him before. And they are looking at him now, not because there’s been a change of heart, but only because they must.