The Business Of Obscuring Language Is A

Introducing Someone As A "negro Poet With A University Degree" Or Again, Quite Simply, The Expression, "a Great Black Poet." These Ready-made Phrases, Which Seem In A Common-sense Way To Fill A Need-or Have A Hidden Subtlety, A Permanent Rub.

In The World Through Which I Travel, I Am Endlessly Creating Myself.

O My Body, Make Of Me Always A Man Who Questions!

Collective Guilt Is Borne By What Is Conventionally Called The Scapegoat. Now The Scapegoat For White Society - Which Is Based On Myths Of Progress, Civilization, Liberalism, Education, Enlightenment, Refinement - Will Be Precisely The Force That Opposes The Expansion And The Triumph Of These Myths. This Brutal Opposing Force Is Supplied By The Negro.

What I Call Middle-class Society Is Any Society That Becomes Rigidified In Predetermined Forms, Forbidding All Evolution, All Gains, All Progress, All Discovery. I Call Middle-class A Closed Society In Which Life Has No Taste, In Which The Air Is Tainted, In Which Ideas And Men Are Corrupt. And I Think That A Man Who Takes A Stand Against This Death Is In A Sense A Revolutionary.