SOLUTION OF RACE PROBLEM HINDERED BY MULTIPLICITY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES
If the above generalizations are correct, they should enable one to draw some practical conclusions for dealing with race problems. The proper adjustment of race relations is being retarded by the multiplicity of suggested solutions, many of them conflicting and thus hindering one another, some of them parallel and necessarily duplicating expenditure of energy. For instance, some men, including both Negroes and white persons, believe that the proper solution of the race problem is the deportation of the Negro race; others, that it is the segregation of that race in some portion of the United States or colonization in some territorial possession; while others believe that the South should remain the permanent home of the majority of Negroes. Advocates of territorial separation of one sort or another think that efforts should be directed toward getting the Negro to his new home as soon as possible. Those who believe that the home of the Negro will remain in this country are divided upon the steps to be taken. Some of this class approve of further education of the Negro, being divided, however, into two overlapping groups, the one emphasizing literary training, and the other industrial. Others of this class maintain that any sort of systematic education of the Negro is only hastening an inevitable race conflict. In the midst of these conflicting opinions, the Negro problem, instead of reaching a complete or even partial solution, is only being aggravated.
There is no need of prophesying what the final solution will be, but one is justified in believing that the inevitable changes will be gradual. Whether or not the final adjustment is a segregation of the Negro race, one can hardly expect it to come in one, two, or even six decades. A century hence the white people will probably be living side by side with Negroes as they do now. The duty of the American people is to act properly toward all races in their own lifetime: the far future will take care of itself. The difficult thing to ascertain is the proper mode of acting to-day. The solution of the race problem, when it does come, will doubtless be a composite result. The race relations are not the same in different sections of the country or in different States of the South or even in different counties of the same State. Though the proper steps now to be taken in the various sections or States or counties may be different, there can, in the nature of things, be but one best mode of action for each community. That must be one for which all people, regardless of race or section, may profitably strive.