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That is just what is wrong with the colored woman in this world … Don’t understand about building their men up and making ’em feel like they somebody. Like they can do something.
We one group of men tied to a race of women with small minds!
The world’s most backward race of people, and that’s a fact.
“Seem like God didn’t see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams—but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worth while.”
Oh, Mama—The Murchisons are honest-to-God-real-foe-rich colored people, and the only people in the world who are more snobbish than rich white people are rich colored people.
’Course you going to be a doctor, honey, God willing. BENEATHA (Drily) God hasn’t got a thing to do with it.
Mama, you don’t understand. It’s all a matter of ideas, and God is just one idea I don’t accept. It’s not important. I am not going out and be immoral or commit crimes because I don’t believe in God. I don’t even think about it. It’s just that I get tired of Him getting credit for all the things the human race achieves through its own stubborn effort. There simply is no blasted God—there is only man and it is he who makes miracles!
I see. (Quietly) I also see that everybody thinks it’s all right for Mama to be a tyrant. But all the tyranny in the world will never put a God in the heavens!
MAMA (Quietly) Oh—(Very quietly) So now it’s life. Money is life. Once upon a time freedom used to be life—now it’s money. I guess the world really do change … WALTER No—it was always money, Mama. We just didn’t know about it.
You ain’t satisfied or proud of nothing we done. I mean that you had a home; that we kept you out of trouble till you was grown; that you don’t have to ride to work on the back of nobody’s streetcar— You my children—but how different we done become.
Why? You want to know why? ’Cause we all tied up in a race of people that don’t know how to do nothing but moan, pray and have babies!
you butchered up a dream of mine—you—who always talking ’bout your children’s dreams …
Oh, honey—you know I’m praying to God every day that don’t nothing like that happen! But you have to think of life like it is—and these here Chicago peckerwoods is some baaaad peckerwoods.
You sure one proud-acting bunch of colored folks. Well—I always thinks like Booker T. Washington said that time—“Education has spoiled many a good plow hand”—
Independence and then what? What about all the crooks and thieves and just plain idiots who will come into power and steal and plunder the same as before—only now they will be black and do it in the name of the new Independence—WHAT ABOUT THEM?!
BENEATHA An end to misery! To stupidity! Don’t you see there isn’t any real progress, Asagai, there is only one large circle that we march in, around and around, each of us with our own little picture in front of us—our own little mirage that we think is the future.
What you just said about the circle. It isn’t a circle—it is simply a long line—as in geometry, you know, one that reaches into infinity. And because we cannot see the end—we also cannot see how it changes. And it is very odd but those who see the changes—who dream, who will not give up—are called idealists … and those who see only the circle we call them the “realists”!
Then isn’t there something wrong in a house—in a world—where all dreams, good or bad, must depend on the death of a man?
somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain’t through learning—because that ain’t the time at all. It’s when he’s at his lowest and can’t believe in hisself ’cause the world done whipped him so! When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.
