Papers of the American Negro Academy. (The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers, No. 18-19.)

by Archibald Henry Grimké; John Wesley Cromwell; Lafayette M. Hershaw; William Pickens; Arthur Alfonso Schomburg; T. G. Steward

The man who seduces another man's wife in such a society, in such a state, is regarded as an enemy by society, by the state, and is dealt with as such. Likewise the man who seduces another man's daughter. For this crime the law has provided penalties which the wrong-doer may not escape. And it matters not whether the seducer be rich and powerful, or the girl poor and ignorant, the state, society respects not his wealth nor his power. His status in respect to her is fixed by law, and hers also in respect to him. While in the event of issue arising from such a union, the law establishes certain relations between the child and the putative father. It enables the mother to procure a writ against him, and in case of her success he will be thereupon bound to support the child during a certain number of years. The state, society, does not yet compel him to give his name to the innocent offspring of his illicit act, but it does compel him to provide for it proper maintenance. Thus has the state, society, in monogamous countries restrained within bounds the sexual activity of the human male, evolving in the process a code of laws and one of morals for this purpose. These codes are administered impartially, equally, by the state, by society, over all of the males in their relation to all of the females.

In monogamous countries where two races live side by side, one dominant, the other subject, the single legal standard, the single moral standard, yields in practice if not in theory to the double standard in law and morals in respect to the sexual question. In the ensuing confusion of moral ideas, of moral obligations, the male instinct gains in freedom from restraints of law, of social conventions, and reverts in consequence and to that extent to a state of nature, of natural marriage. The legal and moral codes which regulate the relations of the males of one race with the females of the same race are not applicable in regulating the relations of those self-same males with the females of the other race. Marriage in such a country has regard to the males and females of the same race, not to those of different races. The crime of adultery or of fornication undergoes the same gross modification. For in such a land the one-wife idea, the one-wife institution has reference to the individuals of the same race only, not to individuals of opposite races. The "Thou shalt not" of the law, public opinion interprets to refer to the sexual conduct of the males and females of the same race in respect to one another, i. e., a male member of the dominant race must limit his roving propensities wherever the females of his own race are concerned. He need not under this same law, interpreted by this same public opinion, curb to the same extent those roving propensities where the females of the other race are concerned. He may live in licit intercourse with a woman of his own race and at the same time live in illicit intercourse with a woman of the other race, i. e., without incurring the pains and penalties made by the state, by society, against such an offense in case the second woman be of his own race. Neither the law nor public opinion puts an equal value on the chastity of the women of the two races. Female chastity in the so-called superior race is rated above that in the so-called inferior race. Hence the greater protection accorded to the woman of the first class over that accorded to the woman of the second class. The first class has well-defined legal and moral rights which the men of that class are bound to respect, rights which may not be violated with impunity. Here we encounter one of the greatest dangers attendant upon race segregation, where the two races are not equal before the law, where public opinion makes and enforces one law for the upper race, and practically another law for the under race.

Under these circumstances a male member of the dominant race may seduce the wife of a member of the subject race, or a daughter, without incurring any punishment except at the hands of the man wronged by him. Such a wrong-doer would not be indicted or tried for adultery or seduction, nor could the wronged husband or father recover from him damages in a suit at law, nor yet could a bastardy suit be brought by the girl against him with any show of success for the support of his child, were issue to be born to her from such illicit union. The men of the dominant race find themselves thus in a situation where the law, public opinion, provides for their exclusive possession the women of their own race, and permits them at the same time to share with the men of the subject race possession of the women of that race. The sexual activity of the men of the first class approaches in these conditions to a state of nature in respect to the women of the second class. They are enabled, therefore, to select wives from the stronger race, and mistresses from the weaker one. The natural law of sexual selection determines the mating in the one case as truly as in the other, i. e., in the case of concubinage as in that of marriage. The men of the upper class fall in love with the women whom they have elected to become their wives, they also fall in love with the women they have elected to become their concubines. They go through all those erotic attentions to the women of each class, which are called courtship in the language of sexual love. Only in the case of women of the first class this courtship is open, visible to the eye of the upper world of the dominant race, while in the case of the women of the second class it is secret, conducted in a corner of the lower world of the subject race.

These men build homes in the upper world where are installed their wives, who beget them children in lawful wedlock; they likewise build homes in the lower world, where are installed their concubines, who beget them children in unlawful wedlock. The wives move, have their being in the upper world and sustain to their husbands certain well-defined rights and relations, social and legal. The children of this union sustain to those fathers equally clear and definite rights and relations in the eye of the law, in the eye of society. The law, society, imposes on them, these husbands and fathers, certain well-defined duties and obligations in respect to these children, these wives, which may not be evaded or violated with impunity. These men cannot therefore disown or desert their wives and children at will. Whereas, such is not the case, is not the situation, in respect to the unlawful wives hidden away in a corner of the under-world, or of that of the children begotten to those men by these unlawful wives, but quite the contrary. For them the law, society, does not intervene, does not establish any binding relations, any reciprocal rights between those women and children and the men, any more than if the men and the women were living together in a state of nature and having children born to them in such a state, where the will of the natural man is law, where his sexual passion measures exactly the extent and the duration of his duties and obligations in respect to his offspring and the mother of them. When he grows weary of the mother he goes elsewhere, and forgets that he ever had children by her.

This is the case, is the situation, in the under-world of the under race. For down there, there is no law, no public opinion, to curb the gratification of the sexual instinct of the men of the upper world, such as exists and operates so effectively to curb those instincts in that upper world. In the upper world these men may have but one wife each, but in the lower one they may have as many concubines as they like, and a different set of children by each concubine. They may have these women and children in succession, or they may have them at the same time. For there is in that under-world no law, no effective power to say to those men, to their lust of the flesh: "Thus far and no farther." In the upper world they are members of a civilized society, amenable to its codes of law and morals; in the lower one, they are merely male animals struggling with other male animals for the possession of the females. On the dim stage of the under-world this is the one part that they play. In this one sensual role they make their entrances and their exits. They may have in the upper world achieved distinction along other lines of human endeavor, but in the lower one, they achieve the single distinction of being successful male animals in pursuit of the females.

So much for the males of the dominant race. Now for those of the subject race. How do they conduct themselves at this morally chaotic meeting-place of the two races? What effect does this sexual freedom, spawned under such conditions, produce on their life, on their actions? Like the men of the upper race, they, too, live in a monogamous country. But unlike their male rivals, these men of the under-world are not free to seek their mates from the women of both races. The law restricts them, public opinion restricts them, the men of the dominant race restrict them in this regard to the women of their own race. Around the women of the dominant race, law, public opinion, the men of that race, have erected a high wall which the men of the other race are forbidden to climb. What do these men see in respect to themselves in view of this triply-built wall? They see that while they share the women of their own race with the men of the other race, that these same men enjoy exclusive possession of their own women, thanks to the high wall, built by law, by public opinion, and the strong arms of these self-same men. What do the men of the under world? Do they struggle against this sexual supremacy of the men of the upper world, or do they succumb to circumstances, surrender unconditionally to the high wall? We shall presently see.

This racial inequality generates heat in masculine breasts in the under world. And with this heat there ensues that fermentation of thought and feeling which men call passion. Those submerged men begin to think sullenly on the subject, they try to grasp the equities of the situation. As thought spreads among them, feeling spreads among them also. About their own women they see no fence, about the women of the other race they see that high wall. They cannot think out to any satisfactory conclusion the justice of that arrangement, cannot understand why the women of the upper race should belong exclusively to the men of that race, and why these self-same men should share jointly with the men of the lower race the women of this race.

The more they strike their heads against this one-sided arrangement, the less they like it, the more they rebel against it. And so they come to grope dimly for some means to oust their rivals from this joint-ownership of the women of the lower race. And when they fail, feeling kindles into anger, and anger into resentment. Against this inequality of conditions a deepening sense of wrong burns hotly within them. Dark questionings assail their rude understandings. Have the men of the upper race their exclusive preserves, then ought not the men of the lower race to have their exclusive preserves also? Is it a crime, has law, public opinion, the men of the upper race made it a crime for the men of the lower race to poach on those preserves? Then the law, public opinion, the men of the lower race ought to make it equally a crime for the men of the upper race to poach on the preserves of the other race. But law, public opinion, refuses to make the two acts equal in criminality and the men of the lower race are powerless to do so without the help of equal laws and administration, and a just public sentiment. Baffled of their purpose to establish equality of conditions between them and their rivals, they thereupon watch the ways of these rivals. They see them descending into the lower world in pursuit of the women of that world by means that are crooked and ways that are dark. A few of the men in that lower world profiting by that villainous instruction, endeavor to ascend into the upper world by the same crooked means, by the same dark ways. For they affect to believe that what is sauce for one race's goose is sauce for the other race's gander. Thus it is attempted craftily, but, in the main, futilely, to strike a sort of primitive balance between the men of the two races in respect to the women of the two races.

Now no such balance can be struck by the unaided acts of the men of the lower race. Without the co-operation of the women of the upper race these men are helpless to scale the high wall, or to make the slightest breach in it. The law, public opinion, the men of the upper race, render such co-operation very difficult, well-nigh impossible, did there exist any disposition on the part of the women of the upper race to give aid and comfort for such a purpose to the men of the lower race. But as a matter of fact, and speaking broadly, there exists no such disposition. The law of sexual selection does not operate under the circumstances to make the men of the lower race sufficiently attractive to the women of the upper race. It is possible that in a state of nature, and under other circumstances, the case might be different. But under present conditions the sexual gravitation of the women of the upper world toward the men of the lower world may be set down as infinitesimally small, practically a negligible quantity. Everything in the state, in society, in deep-rooted racial prejudices, in the vastly inferior social and economic standing of the lower race and the ineffaceable dishonor which attaches to such unions in the public mind, together with the actual peril to life which attends them, all combine to discourage, to destroy almost any inclination in that direction on the part of the women of the upper race.

Now, while this is true, speaking broadly, it is not altogether so. For in scattered individual cases, in spite of the difficulties and dangers, the law of sexual selection has been known to operate between those two worlds. A few women of the upper world, on the right side of the high wall have been drawn to a few men in the lower world, on the wrong side of that wall. By the connivance, or co-operation of such women the men of their choice have climbed into the upper world, climbed into it over the high wall by means that were secret and ways that were dark. As one swallow does not, however, make summer, neither can these scattered instances, few and far between, be cited to establish any general affinity between the women of the upper race and the men of the lower race. On examination they will be seen to be exceptions, which only prove the rule of a want of sexual affinity between them under existing conditions at least. Practically a well-nigh impassable gulf, to change the figure, separates the men of the lower world from the women of the upper one. The men as a class can not bridge that gulf, and the women as a class have no desire to do so. This, then, is the actual situation: the men of the upper world enjoy practically exclusive possession of the women of that world, while the men of the lower world do not enjoy exclusive possession of the women of their world, but share this possession with the men of the upper world.