o in Lansing, I guess, knew how white men would drive along certain streets in theblack neighborhoods and pick up Negro streetwalkers who patrolled the area. And, on the other hand,there was a bridge that separated the Negro and Polish neighborhoods, where white women woulddrive or walk across and pick up Negro men, who would hang around in certain places close to thebridge, waiting for them. Lansing's white women, evenThen, in the second semester of the seventh grade, I was elected class president. It surprised me evenmore than other people. But I can see now why the class might have done it. My grades
From what I heard and saw on the Saturday nights I spent hanging around in the Negro district Iknew that race-mixing went on in Lansing. But strangely enough, this didn't have any kind of effecton me. Every Negr in those days, were famous for chasing Negromen. I didn't yet appreciate how most whites accord to the Negro this reputation for prodigioussexual prowess. There in Lansing, I never heard of any trouble about this mixing, from either side. Iimagine that everyone simply took it for granted, as I did.

　　Awere amongthe highest in the school. I was unique in my class, like a pink poodle. And I was proud; I'm not goingto say I wasn't. In fact, by then, I didn't really have much feeling about being a Negro, because I wastrying so hard, in every way I could, to be white. Which is why I am spending much of my life todaytelling the American black man that he's wasting his time straining to "integrate." I know frompersonal experience. I tried hard enough.
nyway, from my experience as a little boy at the Lansing school, I had become fairly adept atavoiding the white-girl issue-at least for a couple of years yet.