Ragtime

by E.L. Doctorow

America was a great farting country.

For my entire life I have worked in patience and hope for a Christian brotherhood. I have had to persuade the white man that he need not fear us or murder us, because we wanted only to improve ourselves and peaceably join him in enjoyment of the fruits of American democracy. Every Negro in prison, every shiftless no-good gambling and fornicating colored man has been my enemy, and every incident of faulted Negro character has cost me a piece of my life. What will your misguided criminal recklessness cost me! What will it cost my students laboring to learn a trade by which they can earn their livelihood and still white criticism! A thousand honest industrious black men cannot undo the harm of one like you. And what is worse you are a trained musician, as I understand it, one who comes to this infamous enterprise from the lyceum of music, where harmony is reverenced and the strains of the harps and the trumpets of heaven are the models for song. Monstrous man! Had you been ignorant of the tragic struggle of our people, I could have pitied you this adventure. But you are a musician! I look about me and smell the sweat of rage, the impecunious rebellion of wild unthinking youth. What have you taught them! What injustice done to you, what loss you’ve suffered, can justify the doom you have led them into, these reckless youths? And, may you be damned, you add to this unholy company a white who smears himself with color and adds mockery to your arsenal.

This is the most beautiful and righteous rant I’ve ever seen. So many world leaders and people in the public eye need to be this exact same thing. It was powerful for Coalhouse, coming from a role model and true advocate of change, but it was also powerful for me. Preach!

We all Coalhouse!

This immediately reminded me of The Walking Dead. “We’re all Negan.”