LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
From : Vivian Lewis, R. Furneaux Jordan, C. T. Melling, Anthony Barrel!, Kenneth Younger, Bernardine Bishop, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Daphne Hereward, Philip Mairet, Maurice Green, Sydney Jacobson, Richard McDougall, Charles Grey, Charles A. Cain, Violet Creech Jones.
Black Man's Burden
SIR,—I hope it is not only because I am an Ameri- can—and therefore more aware of the danger that other countries may fall into my country's patterns of race-hatred—that I found Mr. August's article so moving. It was at once an appeal to the sense of indignation that full knowledge of the behaviour of our fellow whites can give rise to—and an ex- posure of the sort of hatred that must be the result of any tolerance of continued mistreatment of black- and brown-skinned men in England.
As an American who lived in England, I found enough evidence to support Mr. August's view that it is the British hypocrisy that is nastiest of all. In the US, if you decide to put up a sign saying you won't rent to blacks, you would not have the courage to prefix the `no coloured' with a 'sorry.'
Another thing that distressed me when I lived in London—under Quoodle's party, be it admitted— was the tolerance in the face of intolerance shown by Her Majesty's Government agencies. For example, I tried to get a char from the Ministry of Labour office in Battersea. The first question they asked me was, 'Do you mind a coloured woman?' A northern Yank just couldn't (legally) be asked that by any employment agency—even a private one. So I stopped looking horrified and asked, 'Do you always ask that of potential employers?' The answer: 'Oh, yes. We wouldn't want to send a girl off to an interview and have her hurt and em- barrassed.'
Well, my own instinct tells me even the worst of our own bigots would stop short at staring someone in the eye and saying, 'I hate your kind.' Forcing a couple of British housewives to meet the black menial they feel themselves too good to hire may change a few minds. It is none of the Government's business to shelter them behind its apron.
What Britain needs above all is a series of laws to prohibit racism in jobs and housing—as a start. If you're going to have a nanny state, the nanny should at least be trying to help the children grow up.
VIVIAN LEWIS
51 Avenue General de Gaulle. Brussels 5. Belgium
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