IV. Chapter Two: Departures
B. Focused Reading
The passage presented here has been pieced together from the complete passage on pages 19-21. Refer to the original pages if you need more details in order to answer the questions that follow.
"In Nassau, while learning about myself, I had become conscious of being pigeonholed by others, and I had determined then to always aim myself toward a slot of my choosing. There were too many images of what I could be. Where I could go. Too many images of wonderful, accomplished, interesting black people around and about for me to feel bad about my color.
In Miami, this strange new society started coming at me with point-blank force to hammer home its long-established, non-negotiable position on the color of skin, which declared me unworthy of human consideration, then ordered me to embrace the notion of my unworthiness. My reply was, ‘Who, me! Are you fucking crazy? Me? You′re talking to me?’
I was saying, ‘Hey, not only am I not that which you would make me. Here's what I in fact am. First of all, I'm the son of a really terrific guy, Reginald James Poitier. And Evelyn Poitier, my mom, who′s a terrific woman. I have no evil designs; I'm a well-intentioned, meaningful person. I′m young, and I′m not (42) particularly headstrong - though I can get pretty pissed. I'm a good person, and nothing you say can undo that. You can harp on that color crap as much as you want, but because of the way I was raised, I don′t have a receptor that′s gonna take in any of that.’
Of course, over time, osmosis brings a lot of that sewage to you, and some of it does seep in, you know? But having arrived in America with a foundation that had had time to set, the Jim Crow way of life had trouble overwhelming me.
Vanity, which the dictionary says is an excess of pride, was the only way I could brace myself against the onslaught of the culture′s merciless indictment of me. With no other means at my disposal to fight off society′s intent to restrict my range of motion, to smother and suffocate me, excess was engaged to speak on my behalf. I was saying, ‘Okay, listen, you think I′m so inconsequential? Then try this on for size. All those who see unworthiness when they look at me and are given thereby to denying me value – to you I say, ‘I′m not talking about being as good as you. I hereby declare myself better than you’"(41-42).