The Conservation of Races

The American Negro Academy Occasional Papers, No. 2 THE CONSERVATION OF RACES W.E. Burghardt Du Bois 1897
Announcement
The American Negro Academy believes that upon those of the
race who have had the advantage of higher education and culture,
rests the responsibility of taking concerted steps for the
employment of these agencies to uplift the race to higher planes
of thought and action.
Two great obstacles to this consummation are apparent: (a)
The lack of unity, want of harmony, absence of a self-
sacrificing spirit, and no well-defined line of policy seeking
definite aims; and (b) The persistent, relentless, at times
covert opposition employed to thwart the Negro at every step of
his upward struggles to establish the justness of his claim to
the highest physical, intellectual and moral possibilities.
The Academy will, therefore, from time to time, publish
such papers as in their judgment aid, by their broad and
scholarly treatment of the topics discussed the dissemination of
principles tending to the growth and development of the Negro
along right lines, and the vindication of that race against
vicious assaults.
THE CONSERVATION OF RACES
The American Negro has always felt an intense personal
interest in discussions as to the origins and destinies of
races: primarily because back of most discussions of race with
which he is familiar, have lurked certain assumptions as to his
natural abilities, as to his political , intellectual and moral
status, which he felt were wrong. He has, consequently, been led
to deprecate and minimize race distinctions, to believe
intensely that out of one blood God created all nations, and to
speak of human brotherhood as though it were the possibility of
an already dawning to-morrow.
Nevertheless, in our calmer moments we must acknowledge
that human beings are divided into races; that in this country
the two most extreme types of the world's races have met, and
the resulting problem as to the future relations of these types
is not only of intense and living interest to us, but forms an
epoch in the history of mankind.