We Can Give Up Sugar

 From a World War II-era essay by Pearl S. Buck called "Can the Church Lead?":

Here, then, is the spiritual confusion in which Americans now are, and out of which they must somehow be led. We are faced with the necessity of fighting a war for principles in which we say we believe but which actually we do not want to practice. We talk about the American way of life and we go on tolerating and encouraging and demanding Jim Crowism and Oriental exclusion which are the Nazi way of life. We can never get pure energy out of such a conflict. The spark is applied to wet tinder. There will be no flame.

The truth is that we have not yet carried the war into the places where it really hurts.  We can give up sugar, but we cannot give up segregation. We are willing to ration our gasoline but we do not want to insist that colored labor shall have equal rights with white labor. We consent to the heaviest of taxes for military warfare, but we are not ready to treat the Chinese as we treat the British. We are ready, that is, to give up anything material, but nothing else. Unfortunately, democracy cannot be bought with material goods, nor is human equality to be paid for with silver.  Democracy can only be won by the sacrifice of everything that is undemocratic, and human equality can only be had by the will to have it at all costs.