The
coolie cannot keep his white clothes clean. He toils and they get
dirty. The dirty white of his costume is the token of his
inferiority. The nobleman's dress is always spotless white. It
means that he doesn't have to work. But it means, further, that
somebody else has to work for him. His superiority is not based upon
song-craft nor state-craft, upon the foot-races he has run nor the
wrestlers he has thrown. His superiority is based upon the fact that
he doesn't have to work, and that others are compelled to work for
him. And so the Korean drone flaunts his clean white clothes, for
the same reason that the Chinese flaunts his monstrous finger-nails,
and the white man and woman flaunt the spick-and-spanness of their
spotless houses.
There will be hardwood floors in my house beautiful. But these
floors will not be polished mirrors nor skating-rinks. They will be
just plain and common hardwood floors. Beautiful carpets are not
beautiful to the mind that knows they are filled with germs and
bacilli.
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