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was able to meet the competition of the whites. I mean, this was their level of development at that time.
And I don't think they were particularly sensitive to any other aspect of my being that was different. I mean, I think they were more concerned with the fact that I was different in color, than that I was different in all these other peculiar perverse ways in which I believe I am different.
So that kind of thinking would not be consistent with what they were fixated about.
And of course, they saw that I could meet their standards and requirements, which presented them, I think, even more with the dilemma that-- and then Mamie came right after me and did it too. Unfortunately, nobody else who's black, to my knowledge, has gotten a PhD from the psychology department at Columbia since Mamie. I was the first. Mamie was the last, second and last. All right.
So, certainly in the thirties and the early forties, this was novel enough to occupy their concern, and Mamie and I were Machiavellian enough to let it do that. We weren't going to give them any other burdens. And Mamie was even more daring than I; she went right into the lion's den, Henry Garrett's. She became his student, knowing full well where he stood on race.
Maybe later on, this might have been a factor. I don't think it was a factor in the department at City College. And I don't know whether I made as clear to you as I should that this is one aspect of my life, and my professional and personal career, that I felt, race was a non-factor. And I really don't know how to
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