For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.

A last gift of the letters should be mentioned. They show how vital is the need, especially though not only, for young whites to take the initiative in changing their consciousness about racism. To seek out a different perspective from the one they have always known. To listen to what Black, Latino, and other oppressed peoples say in one way or another. For a new consciousness does not come automatically but with persistent effort.

There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that *they* must accept *you*. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love.

I tell sincere white people, 'Work in conjunction with us- each of us working among our own kind.' Let sincere white individuals find all other white people they can who feel as they do- and let them form their own all-white groups, to work trying to convert other white people who are thinking and acting so racist. Let sincere whites go and teach non-violence to white people!

We will completely respect our white co-workers. They will deserve every credit. We will give them every credit. We will meanwhile be working among our own kind, in our own black communities- showing and teaching black men in ways that only other black men can- that the black man has got to help himself. Working separately, the sincere white people and sincere black people actually will be working together.

In our mutual sincerity we might be able to show a road to the salvation of America's very soul.

[to know your whites] ... is to be intimate with some white persons but to critically withhold faith in white people categorically

Don’t feel guilty for being white – do something with it’

The white folks like for us to be religious, then they can do what they want to with us.

More than machinery, we need humanity; more than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.

There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know.

I feel that the dormant goodwill in people needs to be stirred. People need to hear that it makes sense to behave decently or to help others, to place common interests above their own, to respect the elementary rules of human coexistence.

I heard that these whites are coming to march again, they will announce a new date. I’m thinking national chair we must organise a counter-march and meet them half way. We cannot allow white people to do as they wish in this country, like they’re doing in Palestine. Let them announce the day they’re coming back. Let us meet them toe to toe, let us teach them who owns South Africa. We cannot be harassed in our own country during apartheid and be harassed in our own country during a democratic dispensation by a nonsense Afrikaner community. It must come to an end, let us meet them toe to toe.

White men need a history that does not simply "include" peoples of color and white women, but that shows the process by which the arrogance of hierarchy and the celebration of violence have reached a point of destructiveness almost out of control. In other words, white men need to start questioning the text handed down from father to son, the dominator's version.

What white people have to do is try and find out in their own hearts why it is necessary to have a 'nigger' in the first place, because I'm not a nigger. I'm a man. But if you think I'm a nigger, it means you need it.

Now, if you're white and you don't admit that it's great, you're an asshole.