SIR,—Just a last word about this controversy over Paul Robeson.
I have just received the following letter from a French African in Paris : As a Negro myself, I have read your letter in the Spectator with great displeasure. The pith of your letter is an expression, of yearning for 'justice' on the part of the whites toward the Africans; Negro Nationalists have understood a long time ago that not only is it impossible, but unnecessary—nay, harmful! We have our negritude, which is not only a 'different pigmentation of skin,' as you put it, but also a skeleton, and a civilisation. We, indeed, are very different, and should seek our path outside that of the white race. It is just that the Whites in South Africa should be expelled by us. for it is our land and there we are the majority. But, also,
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it is just, or at least not unjust, that in America the Whites wish to keep us apart and preserve their national character—why not? A whimper- ing attitude and clamouring for such a paltry justice as yours is not in accordance with our dignity. . . • to We must rebuild an empire of Gao, with the contribution of all Negroes : we must not take a subjective stand within a white problem, and indeed the most dignified solution for us is to transport the American Africans en masse to their rightful land.
Enough whimper and/or acid words, I beg you!
Having read that distressingly racialist letter and those in last week's Spectator—one from Mrs. Marie B. Singer (is Paul Robeson not a good singer and actor, really?) and the other from Mr. Levin which, happily, clears up many points in his article— and considering that I myself have criticised Paul Robeson and his book (for other reasons than Mr. Levin's, though) in an article for a Nigerian magazine, and that I have been sometimes accused of 'playing above-race,' I cannot help concluding that the easiest way of making oneself misunderstood in this matter is by writing a 'letter to the editor.'
One can only trust that in the great task of re- conciliation among races, many men and women of good will and vision will not be lacking.—Yours faithfully,
'BOLA ME
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