Civilization in the United States: An inquiry by thirty Americans

by Unknown

RACIAL MINORITIES

“... not to laugh at the actions of men, nor yet to deplore or detest them, but simply to understand them.”—Spinoza.

In America, the race-problem is not only without answer; thus far it is even without formulation. In the face of ordinary economic, political, and religious difficulties, people habitually formulate creeds which give a kind of rhyme and reason to their actions; but where inter-racial relations are concerned, the leaders go pussy-footing all around the fundamental question, while the emotions of the masses translate themselves into action, and action back again into emotion, with less consideration of means and ends than one expects of the maddest bomb-thrower. Everybody has some notion of the millennial aims of the Communist Party, the National Association of Manufacturers, the W.C.T.U., the Holy Rollers; but what are the Southerners getting at, when they educate the Negro, and refuse him the ballot; what ultimate result does the North expect from the granting of the franchise and the denial of social equality? Do both the North and the South hope to maintain a permanent racial division of the country’s population? If so, are the Indians, the Jews and the Asiatics to be classed with the Negroes, as unassimilable minorities? How is the conduct of the American majority suited to this aim, if it is an aim? How can permanent division be maintained, except by permanent prejudice? What do the racial liberators, ameliorators, uplifters, and general optimists think about it; or do they think about it at all?

From the moment of initial contact between the mass of the American population and the country’s most important racial minorities—the Indian, the Jew, the Oriental, and the Negro—the self-congratulatory feelings of the majority have always found a partial or complete counterpart everywhere except among the slaves and the children of the slaves. The long delay in the inception of All-Africanism in America, and the groping uncertainty which still characterizes its manifestations, are due in large part to the cultural youthfulness of the American Negro. Biologically, the black race was matured in Africa; culturally it had made considerable advances there, before the days of the slave-trade. The process of enslavement could not strip away the physical characteristics of the race, but in all that has to do with cultural life and social inheritance, the Negro was re-born naked in the new world.

When one compares the condition of the Negro with that of the other three racial minorities at the moment of contact with the miscellaneous white population, the Indian seems closer to the Jew and the Oriental than to the slave. In a general way, the condition of the Indian tribes resembled that of the Negroes in Africa, but the Indians were left in possession of most of the elements of savage culture and were never entirely deprived of the means of maintaining themselves in this stage of development. Needless to say, the Jews and the Orientals were in still better case than the Indians, for their imported cultural equipment was far more elaborate and substantial, and their economic position much better.

The four racial minorities thus varied widely in the degree of their self-sufficiency, and likewise, inversely, in the degree of their need for absorption into the current of American life. Quite obviously the Negro was least independent and most in need of assimilation. However, the necessity of the alien group has not been the only factor of importance in this matter of assimilation. Each of the minorities has been from the beginning subjected to the prejudice of the majority, and that group which first lost all life of its own through contact with the whites has been singled out for the maximum amount of persecution.

The standard explanation or excuse for race-prejudice is the theory of the inequality of racial stocks. However, for all their eagerness to bolster up a foregone conclusion, the race-patriots have not been able to prove by any sort of evidence, historical, biological, or psychological, that racial differences are not simply indications of unlikeness, rather than of inherent superiority or inferiority. The anthropologists are pretty well agreed that physical differences divide mankind into three major groups, European (including the Jews), Mongoloid (including the American Indians), and Negroid; but science has set no definite limit to the respective potentialities of these groups. In other words, it has remained for race-prejudice to assume an unproved inferiority, and to devise all possible measures for making the life of the objectionable races exactly what it would be, in the absence of interference, if the assumed inferiority were real.

To accept the term “race-prejudice” as accurately descriptive of the feelings to which it is usually applied, is to assume that these feelings originate in race-differences, if not in the inequality of races. This, however, is still to be proved. Race-differences are a factor of the situation wherever two races are in contact, but it is a matter of common knowledge that the members of two or more racial groups sometimes intermingle on terms of greatest friendliness. To attribute “race-prejudice” to race-difference, and to leave race-friendliness entirely unexplained, is to blind oneself deliberately to the existence of variable causes which alone can account for the variable results that appear in the presence of racial constants. Racial inequality of intelligence, if it actually exists, is simply one of a number of ever-present race-differences, and in all these differences taken together one can find no adequate explanation of the variable phenomenon commonly called “race-prejudice,” but so designated here only for the sake of convenience.

Any serious attempt to get at the non-racial causes of “race-prejudice” in America would necessarily involve the comparison, point by point, of economic, social, political, and intellectual conditions in various localities in the United States with corresponding local conditions in other countries where the races here in conflict are more nearly at peace. In the present state of knowledge, the racial theory of race-prejudice is demonstrably inadequate, while the non-racial theory is an hypothesis which can neither be proved nor disproved. Such being the case, the haphazard speculations which follow are not offered as a proof of this hypothesis, or as an explanation of the existence of race-prejudice in America, but simply as a stimulus to inquiry.

Beginning with these speculations, it may be said that the goods and opportunities of the material life, unlike those of the intellectual life, are frequently incapable of division without loss to the original possessor. On this account, competition is likely to be particularly keen and vindictive where material interests are given the foremost place. It is also perhaps safe to say that the long preoccupation of the American majority with the development of its material inheritance has brought to the majority a heavy heritage of materialism. One may hazard the statement that the prejudice of America’s native white majority against the Negroes, the Indians, the Jews and the Asiatics, is now and has always been in some sense attributable and proportional to the majority’s fear of some action on the part of the minority which might injure the material interests of the majority, while the only race-differences which have had any real importance are those superficial ones which serve to make the members of the minorities recognizable at sight. At any rate, an examination of some of the facts that come most easily to hand shows an interesting coincidence between the prejudice of the majority and the power of the minority.

Before the Civil War, the structure of Southern society was bottomed on slavery, and the fear of any humanization of the Negro which would make him appear worthy of emancipation was strong enough to arouse any degree of prejudice, and any amount of repression. The prejudice of the Southern white populace as a whole reached its maximum intensity when emancipation threatened to place the blacks in permanent political and economic control of certain portions of the South. Even to-day, fear of the political power of the Negroes, and perhaps also the over-emphasized fear of black “outrages,” still acts upon the white population as a unifying force; but in spite of this fact, class-interests have become plainly visible. When Black Republicanism had once been driven to cover, the masters set about rebuilding their privileges upon the foundation of Negro labour which is still their chief support. Only a few Negroes have been able to compete directly for a share in these privileges, and accordingly most of the fears of the well-to-do people of the South are anticipatory rather than immediate.

With the “poor whites,” the case is altogether different. Here there is no question of keeping the Negro in his place, for ever since the Emancipation the place of the Negro has been very much that of the poor white himself, at least in so far as economic status is concerned. In the view of the white labourer, the Negro rises too high the moment he becomes a competitor for a job, and every Negro is potentially just that. Accordingly, the prejudice of the poorer whites is bitter and indiscriminate, and is certainly not tending to decrease with the cityward drift of the Negro population.

With the appearance of Negro workers in large numbers in Northern industrial centres, race-prejudice has begun to manifest itself strongly among the white workers. The Northern masters have, however, shown little tendency to reproduce the sentiments of their Southern peers, for in the North there is no fear of political dominance by the blacks, and a supply of cheap labour is as much appreciated as it is south of the Line.

In spite of the fact that the proportion of Negroes in the total population of the United States has declined steadily from 15.7 per cent. in 1850 to 9.9 per cent. in 1920, the attitude of both Northerners and Southerners is somewhat coloured by the fear that the blacks will eventually overrun the country. If prejudice had no other basis than this, there would perhaps be no great difficulty in effecting its cure. As a matter of course, immigration accounts in part for the increasing predominance of the white population; but this hardly disposes of the fact that throughout the South, during the years 1890–1910, the percentage of native whites of native parentage advanced in both urban and rural communities. Discussion of comparative birth-rates also gives rise to numerous alarums and excursions, but the figures scarcely justify the fears expressed. Statistics show that, in spite of the best efforts of the people who attempt to hold the black man down, and then fear him all the more because he breeds too generously, the improvement in the material condition of the Negro is operating inevitably to check the process of multiplication.

If the case of the Negro is complicated in the extreme, that of the Indian is comparatively simple. Here race-prejudice has always followed the frontier. As long as the Indian interfered with the exploitation of the country, the pioneers feared him, and disliked him cordially. Their feelings worked themselves out in all manner of personal cruelty, as well as in a process of wholesale expropriation, but as soon as the tribes had been cooped up on reservations, the white man’s dislike for the Indian began to cool off perceptibly. From the beginning, the Indian interfered with expansion, not as an economic competitor, but as a military enemy; when the dread of him as a fighter disappeared, there was no new fear to take its place. During the years 1910 to 1920 the Indian population actually decreased 8.6 per cent.

If the Indian has neither shared the privileges nor paid the price of a generous participation in American life, the Jew has certainly done both. In every important field of activity, the members of this minority have proved themselves quite able to compete with the native majority, and accordingly the prejudice against them is not confined to any one social class, but is concentrated rather in those regions where the presence of Jews in considerable numbers predicates their competitive contact with individuals of all classes. Although as a member of one branch of the European racial family, the Jew is by no means so definitely distinguished by physical characteristics as are the members of the other minorities here under discussion, it is nevertheless true that when the Jew has been identified by his appearance, or has chosen to identify himself, the anti-Semite takes on most of the airs of superiority which characterize the manifestations of prejudice towards the other minorities. Nevertheless, the ordinary run of anti-Semitic talk contains frequent admissions of jealousy and fear, and it is safe to say that one must look chiefly to such emotions, as intensified by the rapid increase of the Jewish population from 1,500,000 in 1906 to 3,300,000 in 1918, rather than to the heritage of European prejudice, for an explanation of the growth of anti-Semitism in America. The inclusion of anti-Semitism with the other types of race-prejudice here under discussion follows naturally enough from the fact that the Jew is thought of as primarily a Jew, whatever the country of his origin may have been, while the Slav, for instance, is popularly regarded as a Russian, a Pole, a Serb—a national rather than a racial alien.

Like the Jew, the Oriental has come into the United States as a “foreigner,” as well as a member of an alien race. The absence of this special disqualification has not particularly benefitted the Negro and the Indian, but its presence in the case of the Japanese has been of considerable service to the agitators. The prevalent dislike and fear of the new Japan as a world-power has naturally coloured the attitude of the American majority toward the Japanese settlers in this country; but this in itself hardly explains why the Californians, who were burning Chinamen out of house and home in the ’seventies, are now centring their prejudice upon the Japanese agriculturist. The fact is that since the passage of the Exclusion Laws the Chinese population of the United States has fallen off more than 40 per cent., and the importance of Chinese competition has decreased accordingly, while on the other hand the number of Japanese increased 53.9 per cent. between 1910 and 1920, and the new competitors are showing themselves more than a match for the white farmers. With a frankness that neither Negrophobia nor anti-Semitism has made us familiar with, many of the Californians have rested their case against the Japanese on an economic foundation, and have confessed that they are unable to compete with the Japanese on even terms. As a matter of course, there is the usual flow of talk about the inferiority of the alien race, but the fear of competition, here so frankly admitted, would be enough in itself to account for this new outbreak of “race-prejudice.”

When one considers thus the course that prejudice has taken in the case of the Negro, the Indian, the Jew, and the Oriental, it begins to appear that this sentiment may wax and wane and change about astonishingly in the presence of racial factors that remain always the same. Such being the case, one is led to wonder what the attitude of the native majority would be, if the minorities were recognizable simply as groups, but not as racial groups. In other words, what would be the result if the racial factor were reduced simply to recognizability? The question has a more than speculative interest.

* * * * *

If the causes of race-prejudice lie quite beyond the reach of any simple explanation, the manifestation of this prejudice on the part of the American majority are perhaps capable of an analysis which will render the whole situation somewhat more comprehensible. By and large, and with all due allowance for exceptions, it may be said that, in its more familiar manifestations, race-prejudice takes a direction exactly opposite to that taken by prejudice against the ordinary immigrant of European stock; in the former case, a conscious effort is made to magnify the differences between the majority and the minority, while in the latter, a vast amount of energy is expended in the obliteration of these differences. Thus race-prejudice aspires to preserve and even to increase that degree of unlikeness which is its excuse for being, while alien-prejudice works itself out of a job, by “Americanizing” the immigrant and making him over into an unrecognizable member of the majority. On one hand, enforced diversity remains as a source of friction, while on the other, enforced uniformity is demanded as the price of peace.

Although no purpose can be served by cataloguing here all the means employed in the South to keep the black man in his place, a few examples may be cited, in order to show the scope of these measures of repression. In the economic field, there is a pronounced tendency to restrict Negro workers to the humblest occupations, and in the agricultural areas the system of peonage or debt-slavery is widely employed for the purpose of attaching Negro families to the soil. Residence-districts are regularly segregated, Jim Crow regulations are everywhere in force, and inter-racial marriages are prohibited by law in all the States of the South. The administration of justice is in the hands of white judges and white juries, and the Negro’s chances in such company are notoriously small. In nearly one-fourth of the counties of the South, the population is half, or more than half black, but the denial of the ballot excludes the Negroes from local, State, and national political activities. In religious organizations, segregation is the invariable rule. Theatres and even public libraries are regularly closed to the Negro, and in every State in the South segregation in schools is prescribed by law. Some idea of the significance of the latter provision may be drawn from O. G. Ferguson’s study of white and Negro schools in Virginia. In this comparatively progressive State, the general rating of the white schools is 40.8, as against 22.3 for the coloured schools, the latter figure being seven points lower than the lowest general rating for any State in the Union.

Such are some of the legal, extra-legal, and illegal manifestations of that prejudice which finds its supreme expression in the activities of the lynching-mob and the Ku Klux Klan. There is still a considerable annual output of lynchings in this country (in 1920 the victims numbered sixty-five, of whom fifty were Negroes done to death in the South), but the casualty-list for the South and for the country as a whole has decreased steadily and markedly since 1889, and the proportion of Negro victims who were accused of rape or attacks on women has also decreased, from 31.8 per cent. in 1889–1893 to 19.8 per cent. in 1914–1918.

On the other hand, the Ku Klux Klan has now re-commenced its ghost-walking activities under the command of an “Imperial Wizard” who claims that he has already enlisted 100,000 followers in the fight to maintain the “God-ordained” pre-eminence of the Anglo-Saxon race in America. Other statements from the lips of the Wizard seem to indicate that his organization is not only anti-African, but anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, and anti-Bolshevik as well. Indeed, the bearers of the fiery cross seem bent upon organizing an all-American hate society, and the expansion of the Klan in the North is already under way.

However, the Klansmen might have succeeded in carrying the war into the enemy’s country even without adding new prejudices to their platform. There has always been some feeling against the Negro in the North, and the war-time migration of the blacks to Northern industrial centres certainly has not resulted in any diminution of existing prejudice. The National Urban League estimates that the recent exodus from Dixie has produced a net increase of a quarter of a million in the coloured population of twelve cities above the Line. This movement has brought black and white workers into competition in many industries where Negroes have hitherto been entirely unknown, and frequently the relations between the two groups have been anything but friendly. Since about half the “internationals” affiliated with the American Federation of Labour still refuse to accept Negro members, the unions themselves are in no small part to blame for the use that employers have made of Negro workers as strike-breakers.

In twelve Northern and Western States there are laws on the statute-books prohibiting marriage between whites and blacks. Jim Crow regulations are not in force north of Maryland, but in most of the cities there has been a continuous effort to maintain residential segregation, and the practice of discrimination in hotels and restaurants is the rule rather than the exception. Lynchings are infrequent, but the great riots of Washington and Chicago were not exactly indicative of good feeling between the races. One situation which revealed a remarkable similarity of temper between the North and the South was that which arose in the army during the war. It is notorious that Northerners in uniform fell in easily with the Southern spirit, and gave all possible assistance in an energetic Jim-Crowing of the Negroes of Michigan and the Negroes of Mississippi, from the first day of their service right through to the last.

The treatment of the Negro in literature and on the stage also reveals an unconscious but all the more important unanimity of opinion. It is true the North has produced no Thomas Dixons, but it is also true that the gentle and unassuming Uncle Tom of Northern song and story is none other than the Uncle Remus whom the South loves so much. In Boston, as in Baton Rouge, the Negro who is best liked is the loyal, humble, and not too able mammie or uncle of the good old days before the war. If an exception be made in the case of Eugene O’Neill’s “Emperor Jones,” it may be said that American literature has not yet cast a strong, upstanding black man for any other rôle than that of beast and villain.

And yet all these forms of discrimination and repression are not fully expressive of the attitude of the white population. The people of the South are fully sensible of the necessity of keeping the Negro in his place; still they do not keep him from attending school. Educational facilities, of a sort, are provided, however reluctantly, and in half the States of the South school attendance is even made compulsory by laws (which may or may not be enforced). The schooling is not of a kind that will fit the Negroes for the permanent and contented occupancy of a servile position. Generally speaking, the coloured children do not receive a vocational education that will keep them in their place, but an old-style three-R training that prepares for nothing but unrest. If unrest leads to urbanization, the half-hearted education of the Negro perhaps serves the interests of the new industrialists; but these industrial employers are so few in number that their influence cannot outweigh that of the planters who lose their peons, and the poor whites who find the Negro with one grain of knowledge a somewhat more dangerous competitor than the Negro with none. Hence there is every reason to believe that if the white South had rationalized this situation, the Negro would be as ruthlessly excluded from the school as he now is from the ballot-box. In fact, the education of the Negro seems quite inconsistent with race-prejudice as it is generally preached and practised in the South.

In the North there is no discrimination in the schools, and black children and white are put through the same mill. In the industrial field, prejudice cannot effectually close to the Negroes all those openings which are created by general economic conditions, and in politics the Northern Negro also finds some outlet for his energies.

While it would be quite impossible to show that the existence of these miscellaneous educational, industrial, and political opportunities is due to any general desire upon the part of the members of the white majority to minimize the differences between themselves and the Negroes, it is certainly true that this desire exists in a limited section of the white population. At the present time, white friends of the Negro are actively engaged in efforts to eliminate certain legal and illegal forms of discrimination and persecution, and are giving financial support to much of the religious work and most of the private educational institutions among the blacks. The Inter-racial Committee of the War Work Council of the Y.M.C.A. has listed thirty-three social and economic agencies, and twenty-three religious agencies, in which members of both races are working co-operatively. It must be admitted, however, that many, if not most, of the white participants in work of this sort are affected by race-prejudice to the extent that they desire simply to ameliorate the lowly condition of the Negro, without altogether doing away with a certain wholesome degree of racial segregation. For the complete elimination of the flavour of condescension, one must usually seek out those extreme socialist and syndicalist agitators who preach political or non-political class-organization, as a substitute for the familiar national and racial groupings.

In the case of the American Indian, the prejudice and self-interest of the white majority have placed the emphasis on geographic rather than social segregation. Here the demand of the whites has been for land rather than for labour, and by consequence servility has never been regarded as a prime virtue of Indian character.

If the early white settlers had so desired, they of course could have enslaved a considerable portion of the Indian population, just as the Spaniards did, in regions farther to the southward. However, the Americans chose to drive the Indians inland, and to replace them in certain regions with African tribesmen who in their native state had been perhaps as war-like as the Indians themselves. Thus in the natural course of events the African warrior was lost in the slave, while the Indian chief continued to be the military opponent rather than the economic servant of exploitation, and eventually gained romantic interest by virtue of this fact. The nature of this operation of debasement on one hand, and ennoblement on the other, is plainly revealed in American literature. The latter phase of the work is carried forward to-day with great enthusiasm by the Camp Fire Girls and the Boy Scouts, whose devotion to the romantic ideal of Indian life is nowhere paralleled by a similar interest in African tribal lore.

If the Indian has been glorified by remote admirers, he has also been cordially disliked by some of his nearest neighbours, and indeed the treatment he has received at the hands of the Government seems to reflect the latter attitude rather than the former. In theory, most of the Indian reservations are still regarded as subject principalities, and the Indians confined within their boundaries are almost entirely cut off from the economic, social, and political life of the neighbouring white communities. Many of the tribes still receive yearly governmental grants of food, clothing, arms, and ammunition, but these allowances only serve to maintain them in a condition of dependence, without providing any means of exit from it. In justice it should be said, however, that the Government has declared an intention to make the Indian self-supporting, and accordingly it restricts the grants, in principle, to the old and the destitute. Several States have shown their complete sympathy with the system of segregation by enacting laws prohibiting the inter-marriage of Indians and whites.

On the other hand, the mental and moral Americanization of the red man has been undertaken by Protestant and Catholic missions, and more recently by Government schools. The agencies of the latter sort are especially systematic in their work of depriving the Indian of most of the qualities for which he has been glorified in romance, as well as those for which he has been disliked by his neighbours. Many a Western town enjoys several times each year the spectacle of Indian school-boys in blue uniforms and Indian school-girls in pigtails and pinafores, marching in military formation through its streets. As long as these marchers are destined for a return to the reservation, the townsmen can afford to look upon them with mild curiosity. The time for a new adjustment of inter-racial relations will not come until the procession turns towards the white man’s job on the farm and in the factory—if it ever does turn that way.

Attention has already been called to the fact that the Jewish immigrant normally marches from the dock directly to the arena of economic competition. Accordingly his progress is not likely to be at any time the object of mere curiosity. On the other hand, the manifestations of prejudice against the Jew have been less aggressive and much less systematic than those repressive activities which affect the other minorities. Where anti-Semitism is present in America, it seems to express itself almost entirely in social discrimination, in the narrow sense. On the other hand, economic, political, and educational opportunities are opened to the Jews with a certain amount of reluctance. A major exception to this rule of discrimination must be made in the case of those socialists, syndicalists and trade-unionists who have diligently sought the support of the Jewish workers.

The Chinaman has also some friends now among the people who once regarded him as the blackest of villains. Indeed, the Californian’s attitude toward the Orientals has in it an element of unconscious irony which somewhat illuminates the character of the race-problem. The average Easterner will perhaps be surprised to learn that in Western eyes the Chinaman is an inferior, of course, but nevertheless an honest man, noted for square dealing and the prompt payment of his debts, while the Jap is a tricky person whom one should never trust on any account.

In California the baiting of the Japanese is now almost as much a part of political electioneering as is the abuse of the Negro in the South. The Native Sons of the Golden West and the American Legion have gone on record in determined opposition to any expansion of Japanese interests in California, while the Japanese Exclusion League is particularly active in trouble-making propaganda. Economic discrimination has taken statutory form in the Alien Land Laws of 1913 and 1920; discriminatory legislation of the same general type has been proposed in Texas and Oregon; a bill providing for educational segregation has been presented for a second time at Sacramento; Congress has been urged to replace the “gentlemen’s agreement” with an absolute prohibition of Japanese immigration; and there is even a demand for a constitutional amendment which will deny citizenship to the American-born children of aliens who are themselves ineligible for naturalization. The method of legislation is perhaps preferable to the method of force and violence, but if the previous history of race-prejudice means anything, it means that force will be resorted to if legislation fails. At bottom, the spirit of the California Land Laws is more than a little like that of a Georgia lynching; in the one case as in the other, the dominant race attempts to maintain its position, not by a man-to-man contest, with fair chances all around, but by depositing itself bodily and en masse on top of the subject people and crushing them.

If in the realm of individual conduct this sort of behaviour works injury to the oppressor, as well as to the oppressed, it is not otherwise where masses of men are concerned. Stephen Graham, in his recent book, “The Soul of John Brown,” says that “in America to-day, and especially in the South, there is a hereditary taint left by slavery, and it is to be observed in the descendants of the masters as much as in the descendants of the slaves. It would be a mistake to think of this American problem as exclusively a Negro problem.” Indeed, it is true that in every case the race-problem is the problem of the majority as well as of the minority, for the former can no more escape the reaction of prejudice than the latter can escape its direct effects.

To-day the white South is still under the influence of a system of life and thought that is far more enduring than the one institution which gave it most complete expression. The Emancipation abolished slavery, but it did not rid the master of the idea that it is his right to live by the labour of the slave. The black man is not yet relieved of the duty of supporting a certain proportion of the white population in leisure; nor does it appear that the leisured Southerner of to-day makes a better use of his time than his ancestors did before him. Indeed, an historian who judged the peoples chiefly by their contribution to science and the arts would still be obliged to condemn the white South, not for enslaving the Negro, but for dissipating in the practices of a barren gentility the leisure that Negro labour created, and still creates, so abundantly. It is notorious also that in the South the airs of gentility have been more widely broadcast among the white population than the leisure necessary for their practice, with the result that much honest work which could not be imposed upon the black man has been passed on to posterity, and still remains undone.

Any one who seeks to discover the cause of the mental lethargy that has converted the leisure of the South so largely into mere laziness must take some account of a factor that is always present where race-prejudice exists. The race which pretends to superiority may not always succeed in superimposing itself economically upon the inferior group; and yet the pride and self-satisfaction of the members of the “superior” race will pretty surely make for indolence and the deadening of the creative spirit. This will almost inevitably be true where the superiority of the one race is acknowledged by the other, and where no contest of wits is necessary for the maintenance of the status quo. This is the condition that has always obtained, and still obtains in most of the old slave territory. In Dixie it is a career simply to go through life inside of a white skin. However ignorant and worthless the white man may be, it is still his privilege to proclaim on any street corner that he is in all respects a finer creature than any one of several million human beings whom he classes all together as “good-for-nothin’ niggers.” If the mere statement of this fact is not enough to bring warm applause from all the blacks in the neighbourhood, the white man is often more than willing to use fire and sword to demonstrate a superiority which he seldom stoops to prove in any other fashion. Naturally this feeling of God-given primacy tends to make its possessors indolent, immune to new ideas of every sort, and quite willing to apply “the short way with the nigger” to any one who threatens the established order of the universe.

It would be foolish indeed to suppose that the general intolerance, bigotry, and backwardness which grow out of race-prejudice have affected the South alone. The North and the West have their prejudices too, their consciousness of a full-blooded American superiority that does not have to be proved, their lazy-mindedness, their righteous anger, their own short way with what is new and strange. No sane man will attribute the origin of all these evils to race-prejudice alone, but no honest man will deny that the practice of discrimination against the racial minorities has helped to infect the whole life and thought of the country with a cocky and stupefying provincialism.

Perhaps the most interesting phase of the whole racial situation in America is the attitude which the minorities themselves have maintained in the presence of a dominant prejudice which has constantly emphasized and magnified the differences between the minorities and majority, and has even maintained the spirit of condescension, and the principle of segregation in such assimilative activities as education and Christian mission work. One would naturally expect that such an attitude on the part of the majority would stimulate a counter race-prejudice in each of the minorities, which would render them also intent upon the maintenance of differentiation.

Although such a counter prejudice has existed from the beginning among the Indians, the Jews, and the Asiatics, it is only now beginning to take form among the Negroes. The conditions of the contact between the black minority and the white majority have thus been substantially different from those which existed in the other cases, and the results of this contact seem to justify the statement that, so long as it remains one-sided, the strongest race-prejudice cannot prevent the cultural and even the biological assimilation of one race to another. In other words, prejudice defeats itself, in a measure, just so long as one of the parties accepts an inferior position; in fact, it becomes fully effective only when the despised group denies its own inferiority, and throws the reproach back upon those with whom it originated. Thus the new racial self-consciousness of a small section of the Negro population gives the prejudiced whites a full measure of the differentiation they desire, coupled with an absolute denial of the inferiority which is supposed to justify segregation.

It has already been pointed out that the enslavement of the Negroes deprived them of practically everything to which racial pride might attach itself, and left them with no foundation of their own on which to build. Thus they could make no advances of any sort except in so far as they were permitted to assimilate the culture of the white man. In the natural course of events, the adoption of the English language came first, and then shortly the Negro was granted such a share in the white man’s heaven as he has never yet received of the white man’s earth. As the only available means of self-expression, religion took a tremendous hold upon the slaves, and from that day to this, the black South has wailed its heart out in appeals to the white man’s God for deliverance from the white man’s burden. The Negro “spirituals” are not the songs of African tribesmen, the chants of free warriors. Indeed, the white man may claim full credit for the sadness that darkens the Negro’s music, and put such words as these into the mouth of the Lord:

Go down, Moses,

Way down in Egyp’ lan’

Tell ole Pharaoh

Le’ ma people go!

Israel was in Egyp’ lan’

Oppres’ so hard dey could not stan’,

Le’ ma people go!

When casual observers say that the black man is naturally more religious than the white, they lose sight of the fact that the number of church-members per thousand individuals in the Negro population is about the same as the average for the United States as a whole; and they forget also the more important fact that the Negro has never had all he wanted of anything except religion—and in segregated churches at that. It is more true of the black men than of Engel’s proletarians, that they have been put off for a very long time with checks on the bank of Heaven.

Emancipation and the Fourteenth Amendment seemed to open the path to an earthly paradise; but this vision was soon eclipsed by a second Civil War that resulted in a substantial victory for the white South. Economic repression could not be made entirely effective, however, and in the fifty-three years from 1866 to 1919 the number of American Negro homeowners increased from 12,000 to 600,000 and the number of Negroes operating farms from 20,000 to 1,000,000. In 1910 the Negro population still remained 72.6 per cent. rural, but the cityward movement of the blacks during the years 1890 to 1910 was more rapid than that of the whites. Education has directly facilitated economic progress, and has resulted in an increase of literacy among the Negroes from ten per cent. in 1866 to eighty per cent. in 1919. During the period 1900 to 1910, the rate of increase of literacy among the blacks was much more rapid than that among the whites. Thus from the day he was cut off from his own inheritance, the American Negro has reached out eagerly for an alien substitute, until to-day, in practically everything that has to do with culture, he is not black but white—and artificially retarded.

Since America has deprived the Negro of the opportunity to grow up as an African, and at the same time has denied him the right to grow up as a white man, it is not surprising that a few daring spirits among the Negroes have been driven at last to the conclusion that there is no hope for their race except in an exodus from the white man’s culture and the white man’s continent. The war did a great deal to prepare the way for this new movement; the Negroes of America heard much talk of democracy not meant for their ears; their list of wrongs was lengthened, but at the same time their economic power increased; and many of them learned for the first time what it meant to fight back. Some of them armed themselves, and began to talk of taking two lives for one when the lynching-mob came. Then trouble broke in Chicago and Washington—and the casualties were not all of one sort. Out of this welter of unrest and rebellion new voices arose, some of them calling upon the Negro workers to join forces with their white brothers; some fierce and vengeful, as bitterly denunciatory of socialism and syndicalism as of everything else that had felt the touch of the white man’s hand; some intoxicated, ecstatic with a new religion, preaching the glory of the black race and the hope of the black exodus.

With much travail, there finally came forth, as an embodiment of the extreme of race-consciousness, an organization called the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. This clan lays claim to a million members in the United States, the West Indies, South America and South Africa, and announces as its final object the establishment of a black empire in Africa. Connected with the U.N.I.A. are the Black Star Line, capitalized at $10,000,000, and the Negro Factories Corporation, capitalized at $2,000,000. Just what these astonishing figures mean in actual cash it is impossible to say, but this much is certain: the Black Star Line already owns three of the many vessels which—say the prophets of the movement—will some day ply among the Negro lands of the world.

To cap the climax, the U.N.I.A. held in New York City during the month of August, 1920, “the first International Negro Convention,” which drew up a Negro Declaration of Independence, adopted a national flag and a national anthem, and elected “a Provisional President of Africa, a leader for the American Negroes, and two leaders for the Negroes of the West Indies, Central and South America.”

The best testimony of the nature of this new movement is to be found in an astonishing pamphlet called the “Universal Negro Catechism,” and issued “by authority of the High Executive Council of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.” In this catechism one discovers such items as the following, under the head of “Religious Knowledge”:

Q. Did God make any group or race of men superior to another?

A. No; He created all races equal, and of one blood, to dwell on all the face of the earth.

* * * * *

Q. What is the colour of God?

A. A spirit has neither colour, nor other natural parts, nor qualities.

* * * * *

Q. If ... you had to think or speak of the colour of God, how would you describe it?

A. As black; since we are created in His image and likeness.

* * * * *

Q. What did Jesus Christ teach as the essential principle of true religion?

A. The universal brotherhood of man growing out of the universal Fatherhood of God.

* * * * *

Q. Who is responsible for the colour of the Ethiopians?

A. The Creator; and what He has done cannot be changed. Read Jeremiah 13:23.

* * * * *

Q. What prediction made in the 68th Psalm and the 31st Verse is now being fulfilled?

A. “Princes shall come out of Egypt, Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.”

* * * * *

Q. What does this verse prove?

A. That Negroes will set up their own government in Africa with rulers of their own race.

* * * * *

Q. Will Negroes ever be given equal opportunity and treatment in countries ruled by white men?

A. No; they will enjoy the full rights of manhood and liberty only when they establish their own nation and government in Africa.

Perhaps enough has already been said to make it clear that there exists in America no distinctive black culture which could spontaneously give rise to such a movement as this. Culturally the black man is American; biologically he is African. It is solely and entirely the prejudice of the American majority that has forced this group of Negroes to attempt to reconstruct a cultural and sentimental connection that was destroyed long ago. The task which faces the leaders of the new movement is one of almost insurmountable difficulty, for in spite of every sort of persecution, the general life and thought of America are still far more easily accessible to the Negro than is anything distinctively his own.

The cultural shipwreck of the Negro on the American shore has thus placed him more completely at the mercy of the majority than the other minorities have ever been. In the case of the Indians, the Jews, and the Orientals, the race-name has not stood simply for an incomplete Americanism, but for a positive cultural quality which has persisted in the face of all misfortune. These races were provisioned, so to speak, for a long siege, while the Negro had no choice but to eat out of the white man’s hand, or starve.

The reservation-system has reduced many of the Indian tribes to a state of economic dependence, but it has also helped to preserve their cultural autonomy. In most cases the isolated communities on the reservations are distinctly Indian communities. The non-material inheritance of the past has come down to the present generation in a fairly complete form, with the result that the Indian of to-day may usually take his choice between Indian culture and white. Under these conditions the labours of missionaries and educators have not been phenomenally successful, as is witnessed by the fact that the number of Protestant Christians per thousand Indians is still only about one-seventh as large as that for the Negroes, while the percentage of illiterates is much larger among the Indians. However, school attendance is increasing at a more rapid rate than among the whites, and the prospect is that the Government schools will eventually deprive the country of all that is attractive in Indian life.

Toward the close of the 19th century, the Indian’s resentment of the white man’s overbearing actions found expression in a religious movement which originated in Nevada and spread eastward till it numbered among its adherents nearly all the natives between the Rocky Mountains and the Missouri River. This messianic faith bore the name of a ceremonial connected with it, the Ghost Dance, and was based upon a divine revelation which promised the complete restoration of the Indian’s inheritance. Such doctrines have, of course, been preached in many forms and in many lands, but it is no great compliment to the amiability of American civilization that the gospel of deliverance has found so many followers among the Negroes, the Indians, and the Jews who dwell within the borders of the country.

It does not seem likely that the Zionist version of this gospel will produce any general exodus of the last-named minority from this country, for in spite of prejudice, the Jews have been able to make a large place for themselves in the United States. Since the movements of the Jews have not been systematically restricted, as those of the Negroes and the Indians have been, the great concentration of the Jewish population in the cities of the East would seem to be due in large measure to the choice of the Jews themselves. At the present time they dominate the clothing industry, the management of the theatre, and the production of motion-pictures. Approximately one-tenth of the trade-unionists in the United States are Jews, and the adherence of a considerable number of Jews to the doctrines of socialism and syndicalism has unquestionably been one of the causes of prejudice against the race.

In matters that pertain more directly to the intellectual life, the Jews have exhibited every degree of eagerness for, and opposition to, assimilation. There are among them many schools for the teaching of the Hebrew language, and some other schools—private and expensive ones—in which only non-Jewish, “all-American” teachers are employed. Of the seventy-eight Jewish periodicals published in the United States, forty-eight are printed in English. In every Jewish centre, Yiddish theatres have been established for the amusement of the people; but Jewish managers, producers, actors, and playwrights have also had a large part in the general dramatic activities of the country. Finally, in the matter of religion, the response of the Jews to Christian missionary work has been very slight indeed, while, on the other hand, the number of synagogue-members per thousand Jews is only about one-fourth the general average of religious affiliation for the United States as a whole. When one considers the fact that in some fields the Jews have thus made advances in spite of opposition, while in others they have refused opportunities offered to them, it seems at least probable that the incompleteness of their cultural assimilation is due as much to their own racial pride as to the prejudice of the majority.

Similarly in the case of the Orientals, the pride and self-sufficiency of the minority has helped to preserve for it a measure of cultural autonomy. In the absence of such a disposition on the part of the Chinese, it would be difficult to account for the fact that their native costume has not disappeared during the thirty-nine years since the stoppage of immigration. San Francisco’s Chinatown still remains very markedly Chinese in dress largely because the Chinese themselves have chosen to keep it so. The Japanese have taken much more kindly to the conventional American costume, but one is hardly justified in inferring from this that they are more desirous for general assimilation. Indeed, one would expect the opposite to be the case, for most of the Japanese in America had felt the impress of the nationalistic revival in Japan before their departure from that country. In a measure this accounts for the fact that Japanese settlers have established a number of Buddhist temples and Japanese-language schools in the United States. However, figures furnished by the “Joint Committee on Foreign Language Publications,” which represents a number of Evangelical denominations, seem to indicate that the Japanese in the United States are much more easily Christianized than the Chinese, and are even less attached to Buddhism than are the Jews to their native faith. In the nature of things, the domestic practice of Shinto-worship among the Japanese is incapable of statistical treatment.

Thus the combination of all the internal and external forces that affect the racial minorities in America has produced a partial, but by no means a complete, remodelling of minority-life in accordance with standards set by the majority. Prejudice and counter-prejudice have not prevented this change, and there is no accounting for the condition of the American minorities to-day without due attention to the positive factor of cultural assimilation, as well as to the negative factor of prejudice.

* * * * *

Since it has already been implied that a greater or less assimilation by the minorities of the culture of the majority is inevitable, it is apparent that the relation of this assimilative change to the biological fusion of the groups is a matter of ultimate and absolute importance. Wherever friction exists between racial groups, the mere mention of biological fusion is likely to stir up so much fire and smoke that all facts are completely lost to sight; and yet it is quite obvious that the forces of attraction and repulsion which play upon the several races in America have produced biological as well as cultural results.

The mulatto population of the United States is the physical embodiment of a one-sided race-prejudice. By law, by custom, even by the visitation of sudden and violent death, the master-class of the South expresses a disapproval of relations between white women and coloured men, which does not apply in any forcible way to similar relations between white men and coloured women. The white male is in fact the go-between for the races. The Negroes have not the power, and sometimes not even the will, to protect themselves against his advances, and the result is that illegitimate mulatto children in great numbers are born of Negro mothers and left to share the lot of the coloured race.

If the infusion of white blood were stopped entirely, the proportion of mulattoes in the Negro race would nevertheless go on increasing, since the children of a mulatto are usually mulattoes, whether the other parent be mulatto or black. There is, however, no reason for supposing that under such conditions the proportion of mulattoes to blacks would increase more rapidly in one geographic area than in another. The fact is that during the period 1890 to 1910 the number of mulattoes per 1,000 blacks decreased in the North from 390 to 363, and increased in the South from 159 to 252; the inference as to white parenthood is obvious. During the same period the black population of the entire United States increased 22.7 per cent., while the mulatto population increased 81.1 per cent. The mulatto group is thus growing far more rapidly than either the black or the white, and the male white population of the South is largely responsible for the present expansion of this class, as well as for its historical origin.

Thus the South couples a maximum of repression with a maximum of racial intermixture; indeed, the one is naturally and intimately associated with the other. The white population as a whole employs all manner of devices to keep the Negro in the social and economic status most favourable to sexual promiscuity, and aggressive white males take full advantage of the situation thus created.

While it is not generally admitted in the South that the progressive whitening of the black race is a natural result of the maintenance of a system of slavery and subjection, the converse of this proposition is stated and defended with all possible ardour. That is to say, it is argued that any general improvement in the condition of the Negro will increase the likelihood of racial intermixture on a higher level, through inter-marriage. The Southerners who put forth this argument know very well that inter-marriage is not likely to take place in the presence of strong race-prejudice, and they know, too, that the Negro who most arouses their animosity is the “improved” Negro who will not keep his place. They are unwilling to admit that this increase in prejudice is due largely, if not wholly, to the greater competitive strength of the improved Negro; and likewise they prefer to disregard the fact that such a Negro resents white prejudice keenly, and tends to exhibit on his own part a counter prejudice which in itself acts as an additional obstacle to inter-marriage.

In the absence of such factors as Negro self-consciousness and inter-racial competition, it would be difficult to account for the extreme rarity of marriages between blacks and whites in the Northern States. No comprehensive study of this subject has been made, but an investigation conducted by Julius Drachsler has shown that of all the marriages contracted by Negroes in New York City during the years 1908 to 1912, only 0.93 per cent. were mixed. The same investigation revealed the fact that Negro men contracted mixed marriages about four times as frequently as Negro women.

Marriages between whites and Indians have not been so vigorously condemned by the American majority as those between whites and Negroes, and the presumption is that the former have been much more frequent. However, it appears that no systematic investigation of Indian mixed marriages has been made, and certainly no census previous to that of 1910 gives any data of value on the subject of mixed blood among the Indians. The enumeration of 1910 showed that 56.5 per cent. of the Indians were full-blooded, 35.2 per cent. were of mixed blood, and 8.4 per cent. were unclassified. Although it is impossible to fix the responsibility as definitely here as in the case of the Negro, it is obvious that an infusion of white blood half again as great as that among the Negroes cannot be accounted for in any large part by racial inter-marriages. Without question, it is chiefly due to the same sort of promiscuity that has been so common in the South, and the present and potential checks upon the process of infusion are similar to those already discussed.

In the case of the Jews and the Asiatics, it seems that the only figures available are those gathered by Drachsler. He found that only 1.17 per cent. of the marriages contracted by Jews in New York City during the years 1908 to 1912 were classifiable as “mixed,” while the corresponding percentages for the Chinese and the Japanese were 55.56 and 72.41 respectively. The largeness of the figures in the case of Orientals is accounted for in part by the fact that there are comparatively few women of Mongolian race in New York City. Besides this, it must be remembered that, whatever the degree of their cultural assimilation, the Chinese and Japanese residents of the metropolis are not sufficiently numerous to form important competitive groups, while the Jews constitute one-quarter of the entire population of the city. Does any one doubt that the situation in regard to mixed marriages would be partially reversed in San Francisco?

When due allowance is made for special conditions, Drachsler’s figures do not seem to run contrary to the general proposition that an improvement in the economic and social condition of one of the minorities, and a partial or complete adoption by the minority of the culture of the majority, does not necessarily prepare the way for racial fusion, but seems to produce exactly the opposite effect by increasing the competitive power of the minority, the majority’s fear of its rivals, and the prejudice of each against the other.

In spite of all that prejudice can do to prevent it, the economic, social, and intellectual condition of the minorities is becoming increasingly like that of the majority; and yet it is not to be expected that as long as the minorities remain physically recognizable this change will result in the elimination of prejudice, nor is it likely that the cultural assimilation which checks the process of racial intermixture through promiscuous intercourse will result automatically in intermixture on a higher level, and the consequent disappearance of the recognizability of the minorities. Prejudice does not altogether prevent cultural assimilation; cultural assimilation increases competitive strength without eliminating recognizability; competitive strength plus recognizability produces more prejudice; and so on ... and so on.... Thus it seems probable that race-prejudice will persist in America as long as the general economic, social, political, and intellectual system which has nurtured it endures. No direct attack upon the race-problem, as such, can alter this system in any essential way.

Is this conception sound, or not? It stands very high upon a slim scaffolding of facts, put together in pure contrariness after it had been stated that no adequate foundation for such a structure could be found anywhere. But, after all, it is no great matter what happens to the notion that race-prejudice can be remedied only incidentally. If the conditions which surround race-prejudice are only studied comparatively, this notion and others like it will get all the attention they deserve.

RACE PROBLEMS

(The answers are merely by way of suggestion, but the questions may prove to be worthy of serious attention.)

Q. Has the inherent inferiority of any human race been established by historical, biological or psychological evidence?

A. No.

* * * * *

Q. Does the theory of the inequality of human races offer a satisfactory explanation of the existence of race-prejudice?

A. No.

* * * * *

Q. Do physical characteristics make the members of the several races recognizable?

A. Yes.

* * * * *

Q. Is race-prejudice inherent and inevitable, in the sense that it always exists where two recognizably different races are in contact?

A. No.

* * * * *

Q. How does it happen that in the presence of racial factors which remain constant, race-prejudice exists in some localities, and is absent in others?

A. No satisfactory explanation of these local variations in inter-racial feeling has yet been given; however, the existence of the variations themselves would seem to indicate that the primary causes of race-prejudice are not racial but regional.

* * * * *

Q. What study will lead most directly to an understanding of race-prejudice—that of universal racial differences, or that of regional environmental differences which are associated with the existence and non-existence of racial prejudice?

A. The latter.

* * * * *

Q. Does the systematic study of regional environmental differences in the United States, in their relation to race-prejudice, yield any results of importance?

A. No such systematic study has ever been made; a casual glance seems to reveal an interesting coincidence between race-prejudice and the fear of competition.

* * * * *

Q. Is competition more likely to produce race-prejudice in the United States than elsewhere?

A. Because of the general preoccupation of the American people with material affairs, economic competition is likely to produce unusually sharp antagonisms.

* * * * *

Q. Does the coincidence between race-prejudice and the fear of competition offer a complete explanation of the existence and strength of race-prejudice in the United States?

A. No; no such claim has been advanced.

* * * * *

Q. Is the assimilation by the minorities of the culture of the majority taking place continuously, in spite of the prejudice of the majority and the counter-prejudice of three of the minorities?

A. Yes.

* * * * *

Q. Does this cultural assimilation make for better inter-racial feeling?

A. Probably not, because as long as physical race-differences remain, cultural assimilation increases the strength of the minority as a recognizable competitive group, and hence it also increases the keenness of the rivalry between the minorities and the majority.

Q. How can the recognizability of the minorities be eliminated?

A. By blood-fusion with the majority.

Q. How can blood-fusion come about if cultural assimilation increases rivalry and prejudice?

A. ............................... .

Q. Is it then true that, as things stand, the future of inter-racial relations in the United States depends upon the ratio between cultural assimilation, which seems inevitable, and biological assimilation, which seems unlikely?

A. It so appears.

Q. Does the race-problem in the United States then seem practically insoluble as a separate problem?

A. It does.

Q. Has the race-problem ever been solved anywhere by direct attack upon it as a race problem?

A. Probably not.

Q. Does not this conclusion involve a return to the assumption that race-prejudice is inevitable wherever race-differences exist; and has this not been emphatically denied?

A. On the contrary, the implication is that race-prejudice is inevitable where race-prejudice exists. The conclusion in regard to the United States is based on the single assumption that the non-racial conditions under which race-prejudice has arisen will remain practically unchanged.

Q. Is it then conceivable that a complete alteration of non-racial conditions—as, for instance, an economic revolution which would change the whole meaning of the word “competition”—might entirely revise the terms of the problem?

A. It is barely conceivable—but this paper is not an accepted channel for divine revelation.

Geroid Tanquary Robinson