“I am trying to figure out some way I can get nationalized as a Negro as I am tired of belonging to the humiliating white race. One wants at times the comfort of belonging to a race that one can like and respect. This unfortunately has been concluded beforehand for everyone… I am going to write to the Govt. about resigning from the human race. Or at least the white part, which is not by all accounts the most human.”   Thomas Merton