SIR,—May I reply to Mr. 'Bola Ige's letter in last
week's Spectator, criticising my article on Mr. Paul Robeson? To clear up the least important of Mr. lge's points first, I have been called a 'dirty Yid,' and I am not bitter. One of the marks of an' adult mind, I believe, is that it pays no heed to the crackling of thorns under a pot.
But there are more important issues raised in Mr. Ige's letter. 'What Mr. Levin is saying in effect,' he writes, 'is that, after all, one must not speak up against racial intolerance in the US because the USSR also practises some racialism.' Apart from the fact that I said, and believe, nothing of the sort, Mr. Ige's reversal of the true situation is quite breath- taking. In the United States of America many wicked things are done by white men to Negroes; occasion- ally—though happily not for some time now—the ultimate bestiality of a lynching takes place. These things are shameful blots on American Democracy, and there is never any lack of American voices raised to say so; what is more there has been, and still is, a continuous (if slow) progress away from such things. in the Sqviet Union at least three million people, at the most conservative estimate, have been slaughtered in concentration camps, some on racial grounds, some on political, some on none. And Mr. Ige refers to the Soviet Union's actions as 'foolish'! I do not criticise Mr. Robeson for not speaking up against such monumental wickedness, but for lend- ing the prestige of his name and talent—and colour— to its support.
It is of course quite untrue that 'in the Soviet Union, Chinese, Indian, Negro and other coloured students and artists can and do walk and carry out their tasks freely.' In the Soviet Union no man. whatever his colour, can walk or carry out his task freely, and I am sure that Mr. Ige, if he had to choose between being called 'dirty nigger' for his colour and being shot through the back of the head for deviating from the Party line, would choose the former, vile though it be. The late Walter White, whose efforts on behalf of his fellow-Negroes in the United States put the Party-line indignation of men like Mr. Robeson in the shade, summed it up when he said that the American Negro rejected Communism because his aim was to be equally free, not equally slave.—Yours faithfully.
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