Equality

by Charles Dudley Warner

The attainable, not to say the ideal, society requires an increase rather than a decrease of the differences between the sexes. The differences may be due to physical organization, but the structural divergence is but a faint type of deeper separation in mental and spiritual constitution. That which makes the charm and power of woman, that for which she is created, is as distinctly feminine as that which makes the charm and power of men is masculine. Progress requires constant differentiation, and the line of this is the development of each sex in its special functions, each being true to the highest ideal for itself, which is not that the woman should be a man, or the man a woman. The enjoyment of social life rests very largely upon the encounter and play of the subtle peculiarities which mark the two sexes; and society, in the limited sense of the word, not less than the whole structure of our civilization, requires the development of these peculiarities. It is in diversity, and not in an equality tending to uniformity, that we are to expect the best results from the race.

V. Equality of races; or rather a removal of the inequalities, social and political, arising in the contact of different races by intermarriage.

Perhaps equality is hardly the word to use here, since uniformity is the thing aimed at; but the root of the proposal is in the dogma we are considering. The tendency of the age is to uniformity. The facilities of travel and communication, the new inventions and the use of machinery in manufacturing, bring men into close and uniform relations, and induce the disappearance of national characteristics and of race peculiarities. Men, the world over, are getting to dress alike, eat alike, and disbelieve in the same things: It is the sentimental complaint of the traveler that his search for the picturesque is ever more difficult, that race distinctions and habits are in a way to be improved off the face of the earth, and that a most uninteresting monotony is supervening. The complaint is not wholly sentimental, and has a deeper philosophical reason than the mere pleasure in variety on this planet.

We find a striking illustration of the equalizing, not to say leveling, tendency of the age in an able paper by Canon George Rawlinson, of the University of Oxford, contributed recently to an American periodical of a high class and conservative character.—["Duties of Higher towards Lower Races." By George Rawlinson. Princeton Re-view. November, 1878. New York.]—This paper proposes, as a remedy for the social and political evils caused by the negro element in our population, the miscegenation of the white and black races, to the end that the black race may be wholly absorbed in the white—an absorption of four millions by thirty-six millions, which he thinks might reasonably be expected in about a century, when the lower type would disappear altogether.

Perhaps the pleasure of being absorbed is not equal to the pleasure of absorbing, and we cannot say how this proposal will commend itself to the victims of the euthanasia. The results of miscegenation on this continent—black with red, and white with black—the results morally, intellectually, and physically, are not such as to make it attractive to the American people.

It is not, however, upon sentimental grounds that we oppose this extension of the exaggerated dogma of equality. Our objection is deeper. Race distinctions ought to be maintained for the sake of the best development of the race, and for the continuance of that mutual reaction and play of peculiar forces between races which promise the highest development for the whole. It is not for nothing, we may suppose, that differentiation has gone on in the world; and we doubt that either benevolence or self-interest requires this age to attempt to restore an assumed lost uniformity, and fuse the race traits in a tiresome homogeneity.

Life consists in an exchange of relations, and the more varied the relations interchanged the higher the life. We want not only different races, but different civilizations in different parts of the globe.

A much more philosophical view of the African problem and the proper destiny of the negro race than that of Canon Rawlinson is given by a recent colored writer,—["Africa and the Africans." By Edmund W. Blyden. Eraser's Magazine, August, 1878.]—an official in the government of Liberia. We are mistaken, says this excellent observer, in regarding Africa as a land of a homogeneous population, and in confounding the tribes in a promiscuous manner. There are negroes and negroes. "The numerous tribes inhabiting the vast continent of Africa can no more be regarded as in every respect equal than the numerous peoples of Asia or Europe can be so regarded;" and we are not to expect the civilization of Africa to be under one government, but in a great variety of States, developed according to tribal and race affinities. A still greater mistake is this:

"The mistake which Europeans often make in considering questions of negro improvement and the future of Africa is in supposing that the negro is the European in embryo, in the undeveloped stage, and that when, by-and-by, he shall enjoy the advantages of civilization and culture, he will become like the European; in other words, that the negro is on the same line of progress, in the same groove, with the European, but infinitely in the rear . . . . This view proceeds upon the assumption that the two races are called to the same work, and are alike in potentiality and ultimate development, the negro only needing the element of time, under certain circumstances, to become European. But to our mind it is not a question between the two races of inferiority or superiority. There is no absolute or essential superiority on the one side, or absolute or essential inferiority on the other side. It is a question of difference of endowment and difference of destiny. No amount of training or culture will make the negro a European. On the other hand, no lack of training or deficiency of culture will make the European a negro. The two races are not moving in the same groove, with an immeasurable distance between them, but on parallel lines. They will never meet in the plane of their activities so as to coincide in capacity or performance. They are not identical, as some think, but unequal; they are distinct, but equal—an idea that is in no way incompatible with the Scripture truth that God hath made of one blood all nations of men."

The writer goes on, in a strain that is not mere fancy, but that involves one of the truths of inequality, to say that each race is endowed with peculiar talents; that the negro has aptitudes and capacities which the world needs, and will lack until he is normally trained. In the grand symphony of the universe, "there are several sounds not yet brought out, and the feeblest of all is that hitherto produced by the negro; but he alone can furnish it."—"When the African shall come forward with his peculiar gifts, they will fill a place never before occupied." In short, the African must be civilized in the line of his capacities. "The present practice of the friends of Africa is to frame laws according to their own notions for the government and improvement of this people, whereas God has already enacted the laws for the government of their affairs, which laws should be carefully ascertained, interpreted, and applied; for until they are found out and conformed to, all labor will be ineffective and resultless."