No such reality has been visible in the South. Instead of ambition (I speak in general terms), we have witnessed indolence; instead of skill, ineptitude; instead of talent, an inability to learn. It is all very well for social theorists to say of Southern Negroes that they are _capable_ of this, and their _potential_ is for that, and if it were not for segregation and second-class citizenship and denial of opportunity, they would have achieved thus and so; but the Southerner, to paraphrase Burke, is not so much interested in determining a point of metaphysics--he is interested in maintaining tranquility. The Southerner may dwell more than others upon the past and brood more intently on the distant future, but in his daily life he has to be concerned with the here and now--in brief, he has to be concerned with reality. The first reality he faces squarely is the one reality most often shunned: the _inequality_ of man. The typical Southerner, out of the observation and experience of his lifetime, would accept Burke’s thesis that universal equality may exist, but only as the equality of Christianity--moral equality, or, more precisely, equality in the ultimate judgment of God. He knows that “no other equality exists, or may be imagined to exist.” The South holds small enthusiasm for egalitarian doctrines based upon the infinite perfectibility of man. With John Adams, who would have made a splendid Southerner, we know that men are foolish; that men are not benevolent; and we regard this as a normal condition of existence. Theoretically, to be sure, men are born to equal rights; but empirically, for good or ill, these rights are incapable of equal exercise. All men are not born with equal powers and faculties, said Adams, “to equal influence in society, to equal property and advantages through life.” These are realities, and the Southerner as Realist accepts them. * * * * * It is necessary, even in the most affectionate examination of the South and its case before the bar, to insert a number of qualifications and to take account of some dismaying contradictions. The South, I have said, is a distinct political, cultural, and social entity, knit together by hundreds of years of shared experiences. But it was a lively and a valid question, in the postwar decade that preceded the _Brown_ decision, whether this entity would survive. On every hand the “New South” was heralded; the rural tradition was dying, and bulldozers were ripping up the groves of the Nashville agrarians. The provincialisms that had distinguished the South, sometimes mocked, sometimes admired, seemed to be on the way out: Southern cooking, the Southern accent, the South’s pride in being Southern. Dixie, it was said, was rejoining the Union; soon it would rejoin the twentieth century.