Invisible man - Ralph Ellison [137]
The microphone was strange and unnerving. I approached it incorrectly, my voice sounding raspy and full of air, and after a few words I halted, embarrassed. I was getting off to a bad start, something had to be done. I leaned toward the vague audience closest to the platform and said, "Sorry, folks. Up to now they've kept me so far away from these shiny electric gadgets I haven't learned the technique . . . And to tell you the truth, it looks to me like it might bite! Just look at it, it looks like the steel skull of a man! Do you think he died of dispossession?"
It worked and while they laughed someone came and made an adjustment. "Don't stand too close," he advised.
"How's that?" I said, hearing my voice boom deep and vibrant over the arena. "Is that better?"
There was a ripple of applause.
"You see, all I needed was a chance. You've granted it, now it's up to me!"
The applause grew stronger and from down front a man's far-carrying voice called out, "We with you, Brother. You pitch 'em we catch 'em!"
That was all I needed, I'd made a contact, and it was as though his voice was that of them all. I was wound up, nervous. I might have been anyone, might have been trying to speak in a foreign language. For I couldn't remember the correct words and phrases from the pamphlets. I had to fall back upon tradition and since it was a political meeting, I selected one of the political techniques that I'd heard so often at home: The old down-to-earth, I'm-sick-and-tired-of-the-way-they've-been-treating-us approach. I couldn't see them so I addressed the microphone and the co-operative voice before me.
"You know, there are those who think we who are gathered here are dumb," I shouted. "Tell me if I'm right."
"That's a strike, Brother," the voice called. "You pitched a strike."
"Yes, they think we're dumb. They call us the 'common people.' But I've been sitting here listening and looking and trying to understand what's so common about us. I think they're guilty of a gross mis-statement of fact -- we are the uncommon people --"
"Another strike," the voice called in the thunder, and I paused holding up my hand to halt the noise.
"Yes, we're the uncommon people -- and I'll tell you why. They call us dumb and they treat us dumb. And what do they do with dumb ones? Think about it, look around! They've got a slogan and a policy. They've got what Brother Jack would call a 'theory and a practice.' It's 'Never give a sucker an even break!' It's dispossess him! Evict him! Use his empty head for a spittoon and his back for a door mat! It's break him! Deprive him of his wages! It's use his protest as a sounding brass to frighten him into silence, it's beat his ideas and his hopes and homely aspirations, into a tinkling cymbal! A small, cracked cymbal to tinkle on the Fourth of July! Only muffle it! Don't let it sound too loud! Beat it in stoptime, give the dumb bunnies the soft-shoe dance! The Big Wormy Apple, The Chicago Get Away, the Shoo Fly Don't Bother Me!
"And do you know what makes us so uncommon?" I whispered hoarsely. "We let them do it."
The silence was profound. The smoke boiled in the spotlight.
"Another strike," I heard the voice call sadly. "Ain't no use to protest the decision!" And I thought, Is he with me or against me?
"Dispossession! Dis-possession is the word!" I went on. "They've tried to dispossess us of our manhood and womanhood! Of our childhood and adolescence -- You heard the sister's statistics on our infant mortality rate. Don't you know you're lucky to be uncommonly born? Why, they even tried to dispossess us of our dislike of being dispossessed! And I'll tell you something else -- if we don't resist, pretty soon they'll succeed! These are the days of dispossession, the season of homelessness, the time of evictions. We'll be dispossessed of the very brains in our heads! And we're so uncommon that we can't even see it! Perhaps we're too polite. Perhaps we don't care to look at unpleasantness. They think we're blind -- uncommonly blind. And I don't wonder. Think about it, they've dispossessed