THE SOCIAL SEPARATION OF THE RACES.
The Negro has now reached a critical stage in his career. The point of attachment between the races which slavery made possible has been destroyed. The relation is daily becoming less intimate and friendly, and more business-like and formal. It thus becomes all the more imperative that the race should gain for itself the primary principles of knowledge and culture.
The social separation of the races in America renders it imperative that the professional classes among the Negroes should be recruited from their own ranks. Under ordinary circumstances, professional places are filled by the most favored class in the community. In a Latin or Catholic country, where the fiction of “social equality” does not exist, there is felt no necessity for Negro priest, teacher, or physician to administer to his own race. But in America this is conceded to be a social necessity. Such being the case, the Negro leader, to use a familiar term, requires all the professional equipment of his white confrere, and special knowledge of the needs and circumstances of his race in addition. The teacher of the Negro child, the preacher of a Negro congregation, or the physician to Negro patients, certainly requires as much professional skill as those who administer to the corresponding needs of the white race. Nor are the requirements of the situation one whit diminished because the bestower is of the same race as the recipient. The Negro has the same professional needs as his white confrere and can be qualified for his function only by courses of training of like extent and thoroughness. By no other means can he be qualified to enlighten the ignorant, restrain the vicious, care for the sick and afflicted, or administer solace to weary souls, plead in litigation the cause of the injured.