vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”; then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
King is replying to the question (sometimes asked by his colleagues in the movement) “Why don’t you wait a while and hold back on the sit-ins and marches?” The answer is at once withheld and given. It is formally withheld by the succession of “when” clauses (the technical name is anaphora), that offer themselves as preliminary to the direct assertion but are the direct assertion; each “when” clause is presented as a piece of the answer, but is in itself fully sufficient as an answer. “Here is the reason we can’t wait,” each says, but if that isn’t enough, here is another and another. As the huge dependent clause (a clause that does not stand alone as a complete sentence) grows and grows, the independent clause—the sentence’s supposedly main assertion—becomes less and less necessary. Meanwhile, there is an incredible amount of cross-referencing and rhetorical counterpointing going on among the clauses as they advance inexorably toward the waiting, and foreknown, conclusion. A full explication of these inter-clause effects would require an essay. It would include an analysis of the rhyming pattern of “will,” “whim,” and “kill,” which links and bookends the pairs “mothers and fathers,” “sisters and brothers,” and “brothers and sisters.” It would include an analysis of the interplay between inner and outer that begins with the phrase “ominous clouds of inferiority,” continues with “her little mental sky,” and reaches a climax with King’s acknowledgment of “inner fears” that at once reflect and war with “outer resentments.” It would include an analysis of the progression from “nigger” to “boy” to “John” in counterpoint with the withheld honorific “Mrs.” and ending with the word “Negro,” which does not quite reclaim the dignity history has taken from it. But it is enough to note the main effect: the building of intolerable pressure as the succession of “when” clauses details the layered humiliations every black man, woman, and child suffers, and then the spectacularly understated, even quiet, anticlimactic conclusion “then you
King is replying to the question (sometimes asked by his colleagues in the movement) “Why don’t you wait a while and hold back on the sit-ins and marches?” The answer is at once withheld and given. It is formally withheld by the succession of “when” clauses (the technical name is anaphora), that offer themselves as preliminary to the direct assertion but are the direct assertion; each “when” clause is presented as a piece of the answer, but is in itself fully sufficient as an answer. “Here is the reason we can’t wait,” each says, but if that isn’t enough, here is another and another. As the huge dependent clause (a clause that does not stand alone as a complete sentence) grows and grows, the independent clause—the sentence’s supposedly main assertion—becomes less and less necessary. Meanwhile, there is an incredible amount of cross-referencing and rhetorical counterpointing going on among the clauses as they advance inexorably toward the waiting, and foreknown, conclusion. A full explication of these inter-clause effects would require an essay. It would include an analysis of the rhyming pattern of “will,” “whim,” and “kill,” which links and bookends the pairs “mothers and fathers,” “sisters and brothers,” and “brothers and sisters.” It would include an analysis of the interplay between inner and outer that begins with the phrase “ominous clouds of inferiority,” continues with “her little mental sky,” and reaches a climax with King’s acknowledgment of “inner fears” that at once reflect and war with “outer resentments.” It would include an analysis of the progression from “nigger” to “boy” to “John” in counterpoint with the withheld honorific “Mrs.” and ending with the word “Negro,” which does not quite reclaim the dignity history has taken from it. But it is enough to note the main effect: the building of intolerable pressure as the succession of “when” clauses details the layered humiliations every black man, woman, and child suffers, and then the spectacularly understated, even quiet, anticlimactic conclusion “then you
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