White Man, Listen!

173 Pages·1995·11.698 MB·English

by  Richard Wright, Cedric Robinson

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BLACK STUDIES
”In few works has [Wright] risen to such reasoned passion."]
—Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine of Books
lkind
White Man, listen! is a collection of the best of Richard Wright’s lectures on race, politics,
other matters close to the acclaimed novelist and essayist’s heart, which he delivered in Europe
between 1950 and 1956. A stinging indictment of Africa and Asia’s oppression by white soci-
eties, White Man, listen! fascinated and enraged, inspired and infuriated readers when first
published in 1957. Back in print with an introduction by Professor Cedric Robinson, i1i s a bbok
that perfectly captures a time, yet whose wisdom and eloquence remain timeless.
PRAISE FOR WHITE MAN, LISTEN!
”Mr. Wright has the insight of a novelist and ”A valuable book to inform our thinking on
poet, so he is not satisfied with the usual sort
0 moot subiect.” —Kirkus Reviéws
of comment on race relations. He wants to
show the often uncomprehending white man RICHARD WRIGHI is
what he has done to hundreds of millions of ... the author of many
another color, and what he (on do today to ‘ books, including ihe
redeem the situation.” \ novels Black Boy and
.1 I Native Son and noriic-
—Christian Science Monitor
R‘ )\ tion books Black Pot/er
[White Man, listenI] deserves to be read
and Pagan Spain.
with utmost seriousness, for the attitude it
"I ‘ Wright died in l96l1
expresses has an intrinsic importance in our
times.” —New York Times
3-“ HarperPerennial 7 ‘
ISBN U-Ub-D‘IESEH-
A Division of I larpcollinsl’ublis/Jcrs
Cover design and illustration © 1995 by David Dioz
Author photograph courtesy of The Beflmann Archive
USA $12.00
9 80060 925642
CANADA $16.75
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9
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Books by Richard Wright
Pagan Spain
7776 Color Curtain
Blaze/e Power
7796 Outsider
White Man, Listen!
Blaze/e Boy
12 Million Blaze/e Voices
Native Son
Uncle Tom’s Children
WI'II'I‘E MAN,
LISTEN!
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4
—
Richard
Wriéht
With an Introduction by

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Cedric Robinson -

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an
In
Harpcerennial
A Division of I iarpcoliinsl’ublisbm
The Video Biography
Richard Wright—Black Boy
is available from
California Newsreel, 149 9th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103.
Telephone: [phone] fax: [phone]
WHITE MAN, LISTEN! Copyright © 1957 by Richard Wright. Introduction
cepyright © 1995 by Cedric Robinson. All rights reserved. Printed in the
United States of America. No part of this book may be used or repro-
duced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For
information address HarperCollins Publishers, Inc, 10 East 53rd Street,
New York, NY 10022.
Harpcollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or
sales promotional use. For information, please write: Special Markets
Department, HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New
York, NY 10022.
First HarperPcrennial edition published 1995.
Designed by Caitlin Daniels
Library of Congress Cataloging—in—Publication Data
Wright, Richard, 1908—1960.
White man, Listen! / Richard Wright. — lst Harpccrennial ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-06-092564-7
1. Black race. I. Title.
HT1581.W7 1995
305.8'96073—dc20 94-44808
95969798996°lRRD10987654321
This book is dedicated to
Myfiimd,
CnIr‘ ‘a 1 1A1 l(‘
LNK.’ W ILLJNVID,
Chief Minister of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago
and Leader of the People’s National Movement;
and to
the Wsternized and tragic elite
ofAsz'a, Afiica, and t/ae Wm Indies—
thc lonely outsiders who exist precariously
on the clifflike margins of many cultures—men who are
distrusted, misunderstood, maligned, criticized
by Left and Right, Christian and pagan—
mcn who carry on their frail but indefatigable shoulders
the best of two worlds—and who,
amidst confusion and stagnation,
seek desperately for a home for their hearts:
21 home which, if found,
could be a home for the hearts ofall men.

[n €12e cry of every Man,
In 6126’i Infant} cry offi’an
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-firg’a’ manacles I bear.
W’illiam Blake
Lig/Jt breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea. runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides . . .
Light breaks on secret lots,
071 tips of thoughts w/vere thoughts smell in the min;
When logic: die,
7776 secret of the soil grows through t/ae eye,
And bloodjumps in the sun . . .
Dylan Thomas

Acknowledéments
For some of the many fragments of poems quoted in this volume I am
indebted to the following authors:
Frank Home, Langston Hughes, Robert E. Hayden, and Margaret
Walker.
Particularly am I grateful to the editors of The Negro Caravan,
Sterling Brown, Howard University; Arthur 1’. Davis, Virginia Union
University; and Ulysses Lee, Lincoln University; for permission to quote
from their most comprehensive anthology, The Negro Caravan (Dryden
Press), fragments from the following authors’ poems: Frances Ellen
Harper’s Bury Me in a Free Land; Albery A. Whitman’s Rape of Florida;
George Leonard Allen’s Pilate in Modern America; Frank Home’s Nigger;
Robert E. Hayden’s Gabriel; Fenton Johnson’s Tired; Claude McKay’s
W/Jite Houses; and Jean Toomcr’s Song oft/78 5071.
I also wish to express appreciation to Harcourt, Brace and Company
for permission to quote from W E. B. DuBois’s A Litany at Atlanta; to
New Direcrions for permission to quote from Dylan Thomas’s Lig/Jt
Bred/es Where No 51177 Shines; to Viking Press for permission to quote
from James Weldon Johnson’s Saint Peter Relates an Incident; to Random
House for permission to quote James D. Corrothers’ At the Closed Gate
ofjustice; and to Harper & Brothers for permission to qu0tc from
Countcc Cullen’s Heritage.