CASTE IN AMERICA.
BY SECRETARY STRIEBY.
India has four castes, America two. The Hindoo castes are the priest, soldier, merchant and laborer or Soodra. The last is the largest and lowest and bears the weight of all the upper classes, whom it is born to serve and by whom it is despised. The highest caste may come down to the employments of the soldier or merchant, but not to those of the Soodra, but, according to Hindoo orthodoxy, the Soodra can as little enter a higher caste as a stone can become a plant.
America’s two castes are simply the white and the colored races. The latter are the Soodras, and in the orthodox theology of slavery they were born to serve the whites. But while that high orthodoxy suffered a rude shock in the Proclamation of Emancipation, caste comes in to save it from utter overthrow, and has fixed a great gulf between the races, so that especially “they cannot pass to us that would come from thence.”
This proscription of the colored races includes the Indian and the Chinaman, but for the sake of simplicity of presentation I shall refer mainly to the most numerous race in this country—the Negro.
By caste prejudice they are denied fellowship which Christ enjoins—rights which the Constitution grants, access to trades, professions and schools where they could compete with the whites.
Caste is a worse sin in America than in India. In practicing it the Hindoo obeys his gods and his veda; the American dishonors his God and disobeys his Bible. The Hindoo is a heathen and is degraded by caste; the American sends missionaries to convert him and to denounce his caste, and yet sustains caste at home. The Hindoo is consistent in denying equal rights to all men; the American boasts that God made of one blood all nations, and that all men are free and equal, and yet tolerates caste.
In sustaining caste the American perpetuates the inconsistency and shame of slavery. No greater inconsistency was ever shown than in holding slaves in America after the Declaration of Independence; and no greater shame than in the zealous defense of slavery by the press, the pulpit and the theological seminaries—at the imperious bidding of the slaveholder. Caste is the tap root of slavery, and the defense of it is a repetition—nay, an aggravation—of the apologies formerly made for slavery. Men will live to be ashamed of this defense.
Caste is a curse to America.
It injures those who cherish it. Caste-prejudice is a sin. All prejudice is narrow, born of ignorance and hate. Caste-prejudice, therefore, by narrowing the mind and embittering the heart, harms the American citizen both as a man and a Christian. It hinders the progress of its victims. The slaves are emancipated—their continued degradation is the nation’s danger, their elevation the nation’s hope, and yet caste shuts up the avenues of trades, professions, schools and churches, through which alone they can escape from ignorance and degradation. If they rise it must be in spite of all the obstacles that caste can throw in their way.
It creates race antagonisms. The foreign immigration into this country creates no antagonisms. It flows into the great river of American life like brooklets, bringing down often their turbid waters, but these are soon mingled and purified in the mightier stream. But caste renders the colored races an opposing tide now indeed overflowed and borne under, yet resisting their fate. That they are overborne is seen in the nullifying of their vote in the South and in denying them access to the rights, immunities and privileges of the dominant class. But they are neither silent nor submissive. We know how prompt and deadly is the resentment of the Indian; the negro and the Chinaman are more quiet, but they resist as best they can and await the time, in the conflict of tides, when their volume and momentum will give them the preponderance.
Nor is that awaiting vain, nor that time distant, in view of the astonishingly rapid increase of the colored population—an increase of over 500 per day—an increase of 35 per cent. in ten years, as against 28 per cent. in the white population of the South. It is easy to estimate in how few years the colored population will equal the whites, and it is easy to see that, as this growth goes on and long before the equal numbers are reached, the sense of growing strength and of continued wrong will stimulate the negative resistance of the present to the determined hostility of the future; and when that race conflict comes, what human ken can foretell the issue? But we may be sure that when it comes the North, the whole nation, can no more keep out of it than it could keep out of the dreadful conflict with slavery, out of which this impending struggle grows.
Special significance is given to all this by the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States pronouncing the Civil Rights Bill unconstitutional. This takes from the colored man the last shadow of legal protection to rights which he, and all men for themselves, consider essential to their manhood, and will stimulate him to more determined resistance unless the conscience and good sense of the white races shall speedily end this needless, yet dangerous conflict.
This leads me to ask: Is there a remedy for all this, and what is it? Not in dragging the white man down, but in lifting the colored man up. Both races must coöperate. The white man must let down the ladder; the black man must climb. The white man must open the door of the shop, and the black man must go in and do as good work as the white man can. The white man must open the school house and the black man must go in and become as good a scholar as the white man is. The black man can never attain positions and honors by demanding them simply because he is a black man; he must fairly win them by being worthy of them. The white man cannot maintain his superiority by denying the black man the chance of becoming his equal. He cannot hold it by force. Slavery for a time enabled him to do so, for then he had superior numbers and the aid of the Government, but he has no longer that aid and he cannot always have the weight of superior numbers. The white man must give the chance, and the black man must take it and win his position.
But the white man is not ready to give the chance—in other words, surrender the vantage ground his color gives him. Here is a call for an appeal to conscience. The subject must be discussed, North and South, among white and black alike. As the anti-slavery reform arose not out of the stagnant waters of indifference, but out of the dashing stream of healthful agitation, so must the caste reform be brought about. That discussion has begun in earnest, and will not cease till caste be sent to that bourne to which slavery, its ancestor, has gone and whence it shall never return. But discussion must take shape; the Church must cease to sustain caste. The time was when men were afraid to oppose slavery because it would hinder the spread of their churches in the South. They urged: “Why endanger the growth of our denomination by joining in this useless clamor against slavery?” But the time came when these same persons decided that it was more important to destroy slavery than multiply churches that sustained slavery. Missionary societies abandoned their churches in the South, and the great national churches allowed themselves to be rent in twain rather than uphold slavery. Only such an attitude against caste will avail anything. When the North feels that ten churches or schools that stand unequivocally against caste are more important than a thousand churches or schools that sustain caste, then we shall see the beginning of the end.
But the colored people themselves must be educated out of caste. Strange as it may seem, some of them are its abettors, and, stranger still, they are so religiously. As men, they repudiate it; as Christians, they sustain it. They prefer separation mainly, perhaps, because they think the whites would not welcome them. Other reasons may be given. Some of the members love excitement in their worship, and this they can enjoy better if no whites are present; the leaders can be bishops and rulers among their own people, but, if joined to the whites, these honors are denied, or, at least, unequally divided. Why is it that religion is compelled to shield some of the greatest wrongs on earth? Albert Barnes said, long before slavery was abolished: “There is no power out of the Church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it.” Must sinful and harmful caste, the baleful progeny of slavery, find its bulwark in the Church—nay, in some of the colored churches themselves?
But this wish or willingness of these churches for separation is gravely made use of by many most excellent people as a reason for ceasing to make war against caste. It is said triumphantly: “See how the colored people, welcomed to Dr. Goodell’s or Dr. Rankin’s churches, prefer churches of their own.” Does their abetting caste help to destroy it? Did the wish of the Israelites in the wilderness to return to Egypt help them on to Canaan? If the slaves in this country were ever content to remain slaves, as was sometimes alleged, that was all the greater evidence of the curse of slavery. If the Soodra consents to remain a Soodra, all the more does he need the breaking of his bondage that he may become a man. And so, if the colored people consent to caste separation, all the more do they need emancipation from the bondage of caste.
In this point of view the action of some of the large religious bodies North and South in consenting to a separation on the color line is riveting the chains of caste on the colored people, and sustaining caste-prejudice in the hearts of the white race; and it is seriously questioned by many considerate persons whether the presence of two Congregational Missionary Societies in the South, the one working mainly for the whites, and the other side by side, mainly for the blacks, will not, with all explanations, be construed into a sanction of caste. The question is fairly before the churches, and should be met in a frank and Christian way.
The presence with us to-day of a committee appointed by the American Home Missionary Society to confer on this very subject renders its consideration by this meeting a matter of comity and of Christian duty, and to aid in its intelligent and harmonious settlement I beg leave to contribute some facts and considerations.
The A. M. A. was organized when the great missionary societies, home and foreign, aided churches in the South that received slaveholders as members. It was formed not as an anti-slavery society, nor merely as a formal protest against slavery, but as affording a channel through which anti-slavery Christians might carry forward missions without complicity with slavery. Hence it established missions in foreign lands and among the Indians, and also home missions in the West.
But in the progress of the anti-slavery movement the large missionary societies withdrew their aid from slaveholding churches, and soon thereafter came the opening for the great work to be done for the freedmen. The Association was believed to be providentially prepared to undertake this work, and hence it gave up its home missions in the West and among the Indians and entered with alacrity into this new field.
The territory it occupied was the whole South, its schools being located in every Southern State. But gradually it withdrew from Delaware, Maryland, and unwisely, as I then thought, and now think, from Florida. At the West it organized a few churches in Kansas, which, however, it at length turned over to the American Home Missionary Society, only resuming limited efforts there when the great exodus of colored people thither took place. In Missouri it never attempted much in church planting. It found that the Home Missionary Society that had done so grand a work from the Atlantic to the Pacific, rearing its monuments of light and piety along the whole line of its march, had entered Missouri so effectually that there was no more call for the Association in those parts, and hence that state was soon and cheerfully surrendered to the occupancy of that Society. In Texas the Association has established one of its chartered institutions at Austin, the Tillotson Collegiate and Normal Institute; it was the earliest Congregational Society to plant churches in the State; its churches there, though few, are more in number than that of any other Congregational Society, and two calls are pressing upon us now for the organization of new churches. Thus its field may be said to be the “Solid South” leaving out Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, Florida and the new State of West Virginia. In this territory it has planted its large and permanent educational institutions; its 89 churches, united in eight conferences, covering nearly the whole South.
The Association has been as much opposed to caste as to slavery, as its early publications abundantly show, and has ever refused to accept the limitation of a color line. Its schools and churches have seemed to be almost wholly confined to the blacks, solely because it allowed them to enter at all. But it has not confined itself entirely to efforts for that race. It has founded schools and churches mainly white. The church in Jacksonville, Fla., was organized under its auspices. Its founders did not ask pecuniary aid, but they did ask one of our District Secretaries to assist in the organization, which he did, and spent nearly a month with them afterward, supplying the pulpit until a permanent pastor could be obtained. In Kentucky, John G. Fee, its first missionary in the South, commissioned in 1848, formed white churches on an anti-slavery basis. The same was done by Daniel Worth in North Carolina. That church planting in Kentucky was followed by Berea College, the most conspicuous example in the South of an anti-caste institution, its pupils being in nearly equal numbers of both races; and now more recently the example of Berea has been followed by a church and school in Williamsburg, Ky., and in Clover Bottom. Other openings of the same sort are presenting themselves in the same region.
The only movement made by Congregationalists to found white churches in the territory occupied by the Association was begun during or soon after the war. At that time the work of the Association was in its infancy, and the broad and permanent foundations which it has since laid were scarcely anticipated. On the other hand, this new movement for white churches was mainly confined to the largest cities and perhaps the thought of possible competition was not entertained. At all events the movement was not very successful and was very nearly abandoned.
Whatever general impressions may have existed at that early day as to the special work of the Association or whatever special designations may since have been used as to the classes for which it was mainly to labor, it never supposed that it was to be confined entirely to those classes; and certainly now, after nearly twenty years of almost exclusive occupancy of the special territory to which it has confined itself, so far as Congregationalists are concerned, it may well be supposed to look with some surprise upon a movement recently inaugurated to enter that same territory with missionary efforts that practically places it on one side of a color line.
An agreement was made between the two societies when this question came before them, which provides temporarily and tentatively against the repetition of any such interferences as that which started this discussion. Both societies have agreed not to enter into any field occupied by the other without mutual consultation. But this agreement provides no permanent basis for a settlement of the question which field each society shall occupy. It only insures Christian co-operation and forbearance until a settlement be made. What that settlement shall be is for the constituency of our societies to determine, and to them we must leave it. The American Board and the Association have made a harmonious arrangement of their respective fields of labor, and it is to be hoped that an adjustment equally satisfactory may be reached with the American Home Missionary Society.
In view of all this several questions ought to be considered.
1. What is the field open before us among the white population of the South?
It is not the extent of the territory, nor the number of millions of white people that are in the South, nor even the number that need our school and Gospel advantages, but it is: How many of them can be reached by an anti-caste Gospel?
It is not enough to say that we are to preach the Gospel, and if people are converted the caste question will take care of itself. Well do I remember when that plea and policy were in vogue in regard to slavery. The Gospel was preached, churches were formed, and the denominations were happy in their enlargement. Slavery also did take care of itself, and good care, too, for it found snug homes in these very churches. And well do I remember when these same denominations cast slavery away from them and the coveted churches along with it!
The American churches cannot afford to repeat that experience in regard to caste. What was done then in comparative innocence, because done in ignorance, cannot now be done without great guilt in the light of that experience. We must remember that it is more important to destroy caste than to found churches that will sustain caste. No work can be done by our churches among the white people of the South that will stand the test, that does not proceed on the avowed and practical repudiation of caste; no school opened that does not welcome the colored child; no church formed that does not present the open door, the open hand and the open heart to “Our Brother in Black.” There are Congregationalists in the South that are ready to welcome again the polity of New England and at the same time welcome among them the colored races, and there are native Southerners ready for our schools and churches, and also ready to make no distinction on account of color, and to all such we ought to carry with joyful hearts and ready hands the institutions we so much cherish. But we ought not to enter upon the effort under a misapprehension. The number of openings for this kind of labor is not great.
2. The question of two Congregational Societies on the Southern field receives its greatest importance from its relation to caste-prejudice. There are other difficulties. One of the saddest features of the modern church extension at the West is the starting of two or more feeble churches of different denominations in small villages or among sparse populations, creating frictions and rivalries where harmony and Christian fellowship are so essential, and a waste of men and money where there is so much need of economy. This would be aggravated in the poorer and sparser settlements of the South, and still more aggravated if the same denomination should, by two of its own societies there, thus come into rivalry with itself. In the one case two houses are arrayed against each other; in the other, a house is divided against itself. It is the same railroad company running parallel lines in competition with each other.
But all these considerations, grave as they are, are of small importance when compared with the danger that the division of the labors of two societies, running mainly along the color line, would be construed as lending the sanction of the denomination to caste separation. This is the gravamen of the difficulty. I am happy to say that the two societies are equally committed against caste, and will equally and honorably repudiate all intentional sanction of it. But the bare fact that one is avowedly working mainly for the whites and the other mainly for the blacks, will, in spite of all protests to the contrary, array them before the public as separated only by the color line. It is not proper for me to speak for another society, but for my own I must speak. The American Missionary Association was born an opponent of slavery. Amid poverty, sneers and reproach from the best of men, as well as the worst of men, it pressed forward in its opposition till the glorious end came. It must oppose caste as it did slavery. It began its work among the freedmen as the avowed enemy of caste, and amid much misapprehension and reproach at the South, it has pressed onward until it has gained the respect of both races. That position it cannot, and it ought not to be asked to, surrender or jeopardize by being placed on one side of a line of separation in missionary labors that has no reason for its existence except the colors of the people to be benefited.
3. If, in view of all the facts, it should be ultimately decided that the Congregational churches should be represented at the South by one missionary society, the decision should be reached in the broadest spirit of Christian wisdom and kindness.
The American Missionary Association is not eager to be pushed forward into the mission work among the whites, but it knows something of their needs, especially their need of deliverance from caste-prejudice that mars the symmetry of their piety and chills their hearts as slavery did, and that perpetuates a race antagonism that must be crushed before the South can be safe or prosperous. If the Association should be called to that work, it has some experiences and facilities that would be helpful. Its past record would be a guaranty that it would not foster caste. It would have no temptation to found schools and churches mainly white that should be rivals of its schools and churches mainly colored, and it could have no reason to hesitate in establishing both, if both were needed. It is not “handicapped” for this work except by its firm and well-known attitude against caste, and any other society equally faithful on that subject would soon be equally handicapped. Its large planting of schools and churches, with a value of property of nearly a million of dollars, gives it a position and an influence that it would take any other society a long time and a large outlay of funds to acquire—to say nothing of the facilities it thus possesses to extend its work among both races. It has a wide acquaintance with the Southern people, both white and colored, and has won for itself a large place in their confidence, by its quiet, unselfish and useful work for both. It has, moreover, already done something in bringing the two races together in school and church, and for this reason it is fitted to be a bond of union and Christian fellowship between them.
This Association, standing on the ruins of slavery, and amid the schools and churches it has erected thereon for the benefit of the colored race, and to some extent also for the white, would find it both cognate and congenial to enlarge its work among the whites, both the ignorant and the educated, carrying to them a gospel that is not only uplifting and purifying, but that makes no caste distinction in the school room or in the house of God.