"No! That's not the way."
She was treating us like misbehaving students. We were children lost in the woods. We needed adult guidance, a firm hand to deal with our errant ways.
This was daylight racism.
It would have occurred to none of us to dictate to Mrs. Martin how her country should be governed. We felt incompetent.
She was white, we were brown. It seemed natural - almost rational - that she would know what was best for us.
None of us contradicted her, none of us stood his ground. We accepted the scolding in stupid silence.
Her effortless assumption of white superiority hardly offended. We look up to white people as our natural superiors.
We felt like negroes post-Reconstruction, Uncle Tomming to our erstwhile masters. We are the Dr Azizes of South Asia, brown sahibs, coconuts, mental slaves.
It didn't occur to her that we were rational human beings assembled in the little office at Martin Hall, Notre Dame College.
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