Following the Color Line — What to Do About the Negro—A Few Conclusions - part 1

CHAPTER XIV WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE NEGRO--A FEW CONCLUSIONS

The deeper one delves into the problem of race, the humbler he becomes concerning his own views.

Studying a black man, he discovers that he must study human nature.

The best he can do, then, is to present his latest and clearest thought, knowing that newer light and deeper knowledge may modify his conclusions.

It is out of such expressions of individual thought (no one man has or can have all the truth) and the kindly discussion which follows it (and why shouldn't it be kindly?

) that arises finally that power of social action which we call public opinion.

Together--not otherwise--we may approach the truth.

The world to-day is just beginning to meet new phases of the problem of race difference.

Improved transportation and communication are yearly making the earth smaller.

As Americans we are being brought every year into closer contact with black and yellow people.

We are already disturbed not only by a Negro race problem, but on our Pacific coast and in Hawaii we have a Japanese and Chinese problem.

In the Philippine Islands we have a tangle of race problems in comparison with which our Southern situation seems simple.

Other nations are facing complexities equally various and difficult.

England's problems in both South Africa and India are largely racial.

The great issue in Australia, where Chinese labour has become a political question, is expressed in the campaign slogan: "A white Australia."

_What Is the Race Problem?

_ Essentially, then, what is the race problem?

The race problem is the problem of living with human beings who are not like us, whether they are, in our estimation, our "superiors" or "inferiors," whether they have kinky hair or pigtails, whether they are slant-eyed, hook-nosed, or thick-lipped.

In its essence it is the same problem, magnified, which besets every neighbourhood, even every family.

In our own country we have 10,000,000 Negroes distributed among 75,000,000 white people.

They did not come here to invade us, or because they wanted to come.

We brought them by force, and at a fearful and cruel sacrifice of life.

We brought them, not to do them good, but selfishly, that they might be compelled to do the hard work and let us live lazily, eat richly, sleep softly.

We treated them as beasts of burden.

I say "we," for the North owned slaves, too, at first, and emancipated them (by selling them to the South) because it did not pay to keep them.

Nor was the anti-slavery sentiment peculiar to the North; voices were raised against the institution of slavery by many Southern statesmen from Jefferson down--men who knew by familiar observation of the evil of slavery, especially for the white man.

_Differences Between Southern and Northern Attitudes Toward the Race Problem_ But differences are apparent in the outlook of the South and North which must be pointed out before we can arrive at any general conclusions.

By understanding the reasons for race feeling we shall be the better able to judge of the remedies proposed.

In the first place, the South is still clouded with bitter memories of the war, and especially of the Reconstruction period.

The North cannot understand how deep and real this feeling is, how it has been warped into the souls of even the third generation.

The North, victorious, forgot; but the South, broken and defeated, remembered.

Until I had been a good while in the South and talked with many people I had no idea what a social cataclysm like the Civil War really meant to those who are defeated, how long it echoes in the hearts of men and women.

The Negro has indeed suffered--suffered on his way upward; but the white man, with his higher cultivation, his keener sensibilities, his memories of a departed glory, has suffered far more.

I have tried, as I have listened to the stories of struggle which only the South knows, to put myself in the place of these Anglo-Saxon men and women, and I think I can understand a little at least of what it must have meant to meet defeat, loss of relatives and friends, grinding poverty, the chaos of reconstruction--and after all that to have, always at elbow-touch, the unconscious cause of all their trouble, the millions of inert, largely helpless Negroes who, imbued with a sharp sense of their rights, are attaining only slowly a corresponding appreciation of their duties and responsibilities.

The ruin of the war left the South poor, and it has provided itself slowly with educational advantages.

It is a long step behind the North in the average of education among white people not less than coloured.

But more than all else, perhaps, the South is in the throes of vast economic changes.

It is in the transition stage between the old wasteful, semi-feudal civilisation and the sharp new city and industrial life.

It is suffering the common pains of readjustment; and, being hurt, it is not wholly conscious of the real reason.

For example, many of the troubles between the races attributed to the perversity of the Negro are often only the common difficulties which arise out of the relationship of employer and employee.

In other words, difficulties in the South are often attributed to the race problem which in the North we know as the labour problem.

For the South even yet has not fully established itself on the wage system.

Payment of Negroes in the country is still often a matter of old clothes, baskets from the white man's kitchen or store, with occasionally a little money, which is often looked upon as an indulgence rather than a right.

No race ever yet has sprung directly from slavery into the freedom of a full-fledged wage system, no matter what the laws were.

It is not insignificant of progress that the "basket habit" is coming to be looked upon as thievery, organised charity in the cities is taking the place of indiscriminate personal gifts, wages are more regularly paid and measure more accurately the value of the service rendered.

But the relationships between the races still smack in no small degree, especially in matters of social contact (which are always the last to change), of the old feudal character; they are personal and sentimental.

They express themselves in the personal liking for the old "mammies," in the personal contempt for the "smart Negro."

A large part of the South still believes that the Negro was created to serve the white man, and for no other purpose.

This is especially the belief in the conservative country districts.

"If these Negroes become doctors and merchants or buy their own farms," a Southern woman said to me as a clinching argument against Negro education, "what shall we do for servants?"

Another reason for the feeling in the South against the Negro is that the South has never had any other labouring class of people (to speak of) with which to compare the Negro.

All the employers have been white; most of the workers have been black.

The North, on the other hand, has had a constant procession of ignorant working people of various sorts.

The North is familiar with the progress of alien people, wherein the workingman of to-day becomes the employer of to-morrow--which has not happened in the South.

_Confusion of Labour and Race Problems_ An illustration of the confusion between the race problem and the labour problem is presented in certain Southern neighbourhoods by the influx of European immigrants.

Because the Italian does the work of the Negro, a tendency exists to treat him like a Negro.

In Louisiana on the sugar plantations Italian white women sometimes work under Negro foremen and no objection is made.

A movement is actually under way in Mississippi to keep the children of Italian immigrants out of the white schools.

In not a few instances white workmen have been held in peonage like Negroes; several such cases are now pending in the courts.

Here is a dispatch showing how new Italian immigrants were treated in one part of Mississippi--only the Italians, unlike the Negroes, have an active government behind them: MOBILE, ALA.

, October 3. --The Italian Government has taken notice of the situation at Sumrall, Miss. , where the native whites are endeavouring to keep Italian children out of the schools and where a leader of the Italians was taken to the woods and whipped.

The Italian Consul at New Orleans, Count G. Morroni, reached Mobile this afternoon and began an investigation of the situation.

He to-day heard the story of Frank Seaglioni, the leader of the Italian colony at Sumrall, who was a few days ago decoyed from his home at night with a bogus message from New Orleans and unmercifully whipped by a mob of white men.

A decided tendency also exists to charge up to the Negro, because he is a Negro, all the crimes which are commonly committed by any ignorant, neglected, poverty-stricken people.

Only last summer we had in New York what the newspaper reporters called a "crime wave."

The crime in that case was what is designated in the South as the "usual crime" (offences against women) for which Negroes are lynched.

But in New York not a Negro was implicated.

I was struck while in Philadelphia by a presentment of a grand jury in Judge Kinsey's court upon the subject of a "crime wave" which read thus: In closing our duties as jurymen, we wish to call to the attention of this court the large proportion of cases presented to us for action wherein the offences were charged to either persons of foreign birth or those of the coloured race, and we feel that some measures should be taken to the end that our city should be relieved of both the burden of the undesirable alien and the irresponsible coloured person.

Here, it will be seen, the "undesirable alien" and "irresponsible coloured person" are classed together, although it is significant of the greater prejudice against the coloured man that the newspaper report of the action of the grand jury should be headed "Negro Crime Abnormal," without referring to the alien at all.

When I inquired at the prosecutor's office about the presentiment, I was told: "Oh, the dagoes are just as bad as the Negroes."

And both are bad, not because they are Negroes or Italians, but because they are ignorant, neglected, poverty-stricken.

Thus in the dust and confusion of the vast readjustments now going on in the South, the discomfort of which both races feel but neither quite understands, we have the white man blindly blaming the Negro and the Negro blindly hating the white.

When they both understand that many of the troubles they are having are only the common gall-spots of the new industrial harness there will be a better living together.

I do not wish to imply, of course, that an industrial age or the wage system furnishes an ideal condition for race relationships; for in the North the Negro's struggle for survival in the competitive field is accompanied, as I have shown elsewhere, by the severest suffering.

The condition of Negroes in Indianapolis, New York, and Philadelphia is in some ways worse than it is anywhere in the South.

But, say what we will, the wage system is one step upward from the old feudalism.

The Negro is treated less like a slave and more like a man in the North.

It is for this reason that Negroes, no matter what their difficulties of making a living in the North, rarely wish to go back to the South.

And as the South develops industrially it will approximate more nearly to Northern conditions.

In Southern cities to-day, because of industrial development, the Negro is treated more like a man than he is in the country; and this is one reason why Negroes crowd into the cities and can rarely be persuaded to go back into the country--unless they can own their own land.

But the South is rapidly shaking off the remnants of the old feudalism.

Development of mines and forests, the extension of manufacturing, the introduction of European immigrants, the inflow of white Northerners, better schools, more railroads and telephones, are all helping to bring the South up to the economic standard of the North.

There will be a further break-up of baronial tenant farming, the plantation store will disappear, the ruinous credit system will be abolished, and there will be a widespread appearance of independent farm-owners, both white and black.

This will all tend to remove the personal and sentimental attitude of the old Southern life; the Negro will of necessity be judged more and more as a man, not as a slave or dependent.

In short, the country, South and North, will become economically more homogeneous.

But even when the South reaches the industrial development of the North the Negro problem will not be solved; it is certainly not solved in New York or Philadelphia, where industrial development has reached its highest form.

The prejudice in those cities, as I have shown, has been growing more intense as Negro population increased.

What, then, will happen?

_Two Elements in Every Race Problem_ Two elements appear in every race problem: the first, race prejudice--the repulsion of the unlike; second, economic or competitive jealousy.

Both operate, for example, in the case of the Irishman or Italian, but with the Negro and Chinaman race prejudice is greater because the difference is greater.

The difficulty of the Negro in this country is the colour of his skin, the symbol of his difference.

In China the difficulty of the white trader is his whiteness, his difference.

Race lines, in short, are drawn by white men, not because the other race is inferior (the Japanese and Chinese are in many ways our superiors), nor because of criminality (certain classes of foreigners are more criminal in our large cities than the Negroes), nor because of laziness, but because of discernible physical differences--black skin, almond eyes, pigtails, hook noses, a peculiar bodily odour, or small stature.

That dislike of a different people is more or less instinctive in all men.

A tendency has existed on the part of Northern students who have no first-hand knowledge of the masses of Negroes to underestimate the force of race repulsion; on the other hand, the Southern student who is confronted with the Negroes themselves is likely to overestimate racial repulsion and underestimate economic competition as a cause of the difficulty.

The profoundest question, indeed, is to decide how much of the so-called problem is due to race repulsion and how much to economic competition.

This leads us to the most sinister phase of the race problem.

As I have shown, we have the two elements of conflict: instinctive race repulsion and competitive jealousy.

What is easier for the race in power, the white race in this country (the yellow race in Asia) than to play upon race instinct in order to serve selfish ends?

How shrewdly the labour union, whether in San Francisco or Atlanta, seizes upon that race hatred to keep the black or yellow man out of the union and thereby control all the work for its members!

Race prejudice played upon becomes a tool in clinching the power of the labour monopoly.

How the politician in the South excites race hatred in order that he may be elected to office!

Vardaman governed because he could make men hate one another more bitterly than his opponent.

The Rev. Thomas Dixon has appealed in his books and plays to the same passion.

In several places in this country Negroes have been driven out by mobs--not because they were criminal, or because they were bad citizens, but because they were going into the grocery and drug business, they were becoming doctors, dentists, and the like, and taking away the trade of their white competitors.

So the stores and restaurants of highly efficient Japanese were wrecked in San Francisco.

What is easier or cruder to use as a weapon for crushing a rival than the instinctive dislike of man for man?

And that usage is not peculiar to the white man.

In Africa the black man wastes no time with the different-looking white man; he kills him, if he dares, on the spot.

And how ably the Chinaman has employed the instinctive hatred of his countrymen for "foreign devils" in order to fight American trade and traders!

We hate the Chinaman and drive him out, and he hates us and drives us out.

_Chief Danger of Race Prejudice_ And this is one of the dangers of the race problem in this country--the fostering of such an instinct to make money or to get political office.

Such a basis of personal prosperty is all the more dangerous because the white man is in undisputed power in this country; the Negro has no great navy behind him; he is like a child in the house of a harsh parent.

All that stands between him and destruction is the ethical sense of the white man.

Will the white man's sense of justice and virtue be robust enough to cause him to withhold the hand of unlimited power?

Will he see, as Booker T.

Washington says, that if he keeps the Negro in the gutter he must stay there with him?

The white man and his civilisation, not alone the Negro, will rise or fall by that ethical test.

The Negro, on his part, as I have shown repeatedly in former chapters, employs the same methods as the white man, for Negro nature is not different from human nature.

He argues: "The white man hates you; hate him.

Trade with Negro storekeepers; employ Negro doctors; don't go to white dentists and lawyers."

Out of this condition proceed two tendencies.

The first is the natural result of mutual fear and suspicion, and that is, a rapid flying apart of the races.

All through my former chapters I have been showing how the Negroes are being segregated.

So are the Chinese segregated, and the blacks in South Africa, and certain classes in India.

Parts of the South are growing blacker.

Negroes crowd into "coloured quarters" in the cities.

More and more they are becoming a people wholly apart--separate in their churches, separate in their schools, separate in cars, conveyances, hotels, restaurants, with separate professional men.

In short, we discover tendencies in this country toward the development of a caste system.

Now, one of the most striking facts in our recent history is the progress of the former slave.

And this finds its world parallel in the progress of people whom the vainglorious Anglo-Saxon once despised: the Japanese, Chinese, and East Indians.

In forty years the Negro has advanced a distance that would have been surprising in almost any race.

In the bare accomplishments--area of land owned, crops raised, professional men supported, business enterprises conducted, books and poetry written, music composed, pictures painted--the slaves of forty years ago have made the most astonishing progress.

This leads to the second tendency, which proceeds slowly out of the growing conviction that hatred and suspicion and fear as motives in either national or individual progress will not work; that there must be some other way for different people to work side by side in peace and justice.

And thus we discover a tendency toward a friendly living together under the new relationship, in which the Negro is not a slave or a dependent, but a man and a citizen.

Booker T. Washington preaches the gospel of this new life.

And gradually as race prejudice becomes inconvenient, threatens financial adversity, ruffles the smooth current of comfortable daily existence, the impulse grows to set it aside.

Men don't keep on fighting when it is no longer profitable to fight.