THE NEGRO FOR HIS PLACE.
PROF. C. C. PAINTER.
An intelligent Christian woman, fairly representative, we believe, of the best friends of the negro, herself engaged in the work of negro education as an amateur, in the literal meaning of the word, during her annual sojourn in the South, said to us recently that she did not believe in the attempt of Fisk, Howard, Atlanta and like schools to give this people a higher education. They should be taught the three R’s, and how to work, and so fitted for their place in life. She esteemed it an unfortunate mistake and blunder that they should be disqualified for it by a classical education.
An associate editor of one of our largest dailies, a widely influential man, commended, not simply by its excellence, but by way of contrast, the work done at Hampton, not because in the pursuit of its own aims it left the work of higher education to other schools, but because it taught its negro pupils to work, and did not make fools of them by teaching them Latin and Greek, and this, not because he is opposed to higher education for any one, but because such an education unfitted the negro for his place. These friends are not alone in the opinion that the place of the negro is definitely known, and that is one which demands and allows a very limited range of intellectual power, and requires the exercise of his muscles chiefly.
We respectfully submit that the only possible apology for slavery as it existed in this country was based upon the assumption that the white man had the right to determine just the place in the scale of being that the black man should occupy. He stood forth as the authorized interpreter of nature, and maintained that both nature and Noah had settled it that the sons of Ham were fitted alone to be the servants of their brethren.
When we have assented to the proposition that nature has allotted to a race a certain position, we have assented, logically, to the further and co-ordinate proposition that it should be fitted for the place and kept in it; thus the whole code of slave laws stands approved and justified.
There has been much discussion, and there will probably be a great deal more, as to the proper place and exact sphere of woman; and with more show of reason, for she constitutes not a race, but a class; and nature has indicated in the fact of sex some of the possibilities of her nature and duties of her sphere; has decided some things as possible, and some as impossible to her. She cannot be the father of a family; but what she may be intellectually, morally, spiritually, as a mother, as a woman, can be known only when she has opened before her unlimited opportunity for her untrammeled powers. She may not transcend nature’s limitations, but she ought to insist that man’s ignorance and prejudice shall not prove a more insuperable bar to what she may do.
That nature has placed any disqualifications upon the negro, and has thus indicated or determined what is or what is not possible for him to accomplish, we cannot know until we have so far removed the obstacles we have put in his way, and stricken off the chains with which we have bound him, and thrown open an opportunity which we have barred against him, that he shall have a chance to show what the purpose was with reference to him; and we may thus learn, also, as we are beginning to do, what our injustice and wrong has been.
Our treatment of the negro, whether as slave or Freedman, has been and will be shaped by our theories in regard to him, but it is time we honestly sought to know what the facts are, and draw our theories from them rather than attempt to limit him by our prejudices, as if they were indisputable facts of nature.
The master said the negro’s place is that of a chattel slave, and he wisely enacted that he should neither be educated out of it, nor be allowed to escape from it. The fortunes of war (should we not say the misfortunes, if the theory were correct?) broke the chain and palsied the whip-arm of the master, and now his friends, many of them, who rejoice that he has escaped from his old place, would attempt to fit him for a new one, but determine for him what it shall be, and express grave apprehensions of evil if we say he should have the best possible opportunity to find for himself what it is. The war destroyed the old chain by which he was held in his appointed place, but has not eradicated the disposition of the Anglo-Saxon to decide for him what his new one must be, and in the minds of many it is that of a laborer of the lowest grade; and lest he might escape from it by rising above it, they would see to it that his education shall be of such character as to fit him for it alone.
While the wise teacher sees to it that he shall not neglect thorough training in the most elementary branches in order to become a smatterer in Greek and Latin, it should be done on the general principle applicable to all races and every individual, that any other course would be consummate folly. The theory to which our practice should conform is this: Give to every child of God the best opportunity possible for him as such, and let him in the untrammeled exercise of his powers find out what his Creator designed him to be and assigned him to do.
The time is coming when it will appear incredible that a man’s place in the intellectual and social world shall be assigned to him because of the color of his skin, any more than because of the color of his eyes, or of his clothes. Educate not the negro, but the child, not for his place, but that he may find his place, and do his work among his fellows.