It must be remembered that the oppressed and the oppressor are bound together within the same society; they accept the same criteria, share the same beliefs, and depend on the same reality. Within this cage, it is romantic, more meaningless, to speak of a "new" society as the desire of the oppressed, for that shivering dependence on the props of reality he shares with the Herrenvolk makes a truly "new" society impossible to conceive.

What is meant by a new society is one in which inequalities will disappear, in which vengeance will be exacted; either there will be no oppressed at all, or the oppressed and the oppressor will change places.

What was the most difficult was the fact that I was forced to admit something I had always hidden from myself, which the American Negro has had to hide from himself as the price of his public progress; that I hated and feared white people. This did not mean that I loved black people; on the contrary, I despised them, possibly because they failed to produce Rembrandt. In effect, I hated and feared the world. And this meant not only that I thus gave the world an altogether murderous power over me but also that in such a self-destroying limbo, I could never hope to write.

People don’t have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you’re dead, when they‘ve killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn’t have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they‘ve lost their toy.

James Baldwin