Paul Theroux Quote

Faulkner first spoke about the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the hypocrisy of boasting of our values to our enemies after we have taught them (as we are now doing) that when we talk of freedom and liberty, we not only mean neither, we don’t even mean security and justice and even not the preservation of life for people whose pigmentation is not the same as ours. He went on to say that if Americans are to survive, we will have to show the world that we are not racists, to present to the world one homogeneous and unbroken front. Yet this might be a test we will fail: Perhaps we will find out now whether we are to survive or not. Perhaps the purpose of this sorry and tragic error committed in my native Mississippi by two white adults on an afflicted Negro child is to prove to us whether or not we deserve to survive. And his damning conclusion: Because if we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don’t deserve to survive, and probably won’t.