Now, years later, I condemn myself for the lost rapturous moments; at the time I procrastinated and hesitated as though I had eternity in which to make decisions. I was, as Tyss had said, the spectator type, waiting to be acted upon, waiting for events to push me where they would.
16. OF VARIED SUBJECTS
“I can’t think of anything more futile,” said Kimi, “than to be an architect at this time in the United States.”
Her husband grinned. “You forgot to add, ‘of Oriental extraction.’”
Catty said, “Ive never understood. Of course I don’t remember too well, but it seems to me Spanish people don’t have the same racial fanaticism. Certainly the Portuguese, French and Dutch don’t. Even the English are not quite so certain of Anglo-Saxon superiority. Only the Americans, in the United States and the Confederate States too, judge everything by color.”
“The case of the Confederacy is reasonably simple,” I said. “There are about fifty million Confederate citizens and two hundred and fifty million subjects. If white supremacy wasnt the cornerstone of Southron policy a visitor couldnt tell the ruling class at a glance. Even as it is he sometimes has a hard time, what with sunburn. It’s more complicated here. Remember, we lost a war, the most important war in our history, which was not unconnected with skin color.”
“In Japan,” said Hiro, “the lighter colored people, the Ainu, used to be looked down on. Just as the Christians were once driven underground at exactly the same time they themselves drove the Jews underground in Spain and Portugal.”
“The Jews,” murmured Catty vaguely; “are there still Jews?”
“Oh yes,” I said. “Several millions in Uganda-Eretz which the British made a self-governing dominion back in 1933 under the first Labour cabinet. And numbers most everywhere else, except in the German Union since the massacres of 1905-1913.”
“Which were much more thorough than the anti-Oriental massacres in the United States,” supplied Hiro.