When I got out of the Army in 1944, the guys who were being discharged with me were mostly between the ages of eighteen and thirty. Before they came into our lives, we were on a pleasure binge, and the need for immediate gratification passed through us to our children. “In my generation we did a lot of pleasure chasing-we, the generation responsible for today’s twenty-year-olds and thirty-year-olds and forty-year-olds. We have lots to do, and some things just aren’t going to get done, you know?” And you can take that hat off your head when you come in here thanking us. Now let us hear you applaud that for a little while. It may not be perfect, but it damn sure comes close to being okay. That’s the gist of it: we’ve done something, and we think it’s enough. We did something for you people, whoever “you” are. And they say it not just about black people.
Black people-it’s their own fault if they can’t make it today.” Yeah, well, of course they say that. There are also people who say, “Hey, after thirty years of affirmative action, they’ve got it made. It was for the cohesion of the political process.” There are myriad justifications for denial. There are those power symbols that always say, “Well, it was for the good of the states. There are people in the United States-people among that power echelon we speak of-who maintain that all slaves were happy. Today there are still people all over the world who maintain that the Holocaust didn’t happen. I mean, even the most modest expectations are going to be unfulfilled. If you’re going to say, “Hey now, look you guys, please look at what you did and look at yourselves and punish yourselves and at least try to square this thing, right?”-well, you’ll make slower progress at that than you would expect. “When you’re addressing power, don’t expect it to crumble willingly.