Of his religion:
In spite of pretentions and superficiality, there is nothing so real to the Negro as his religion, although it is a different "reality" from what we commonly expect in religion. The Negro is more excitable in his nature, and yields more readily to excitement than does the white man. The more a thing excites him, the more reality it has for him....
The criminal instinct appears to overbalance any consciousness which makes for righteousness, and the Negro has little serene consciousness of a clean record; he is ready to rush at any surprising or suspicious turn of affairs. The Negro does not value his word of honor; he apparently cannot always tell the truth. Only about one in every ten will keep an important engagement made in seriousness.
The Negro's conception of heaven and hell, God and the devil are very distinct. Heaven is an eternal resting-place where he shall occupy the best place. He sings of his heavenly home in striking contrast to his earthly abode. Perhaps for the reason that the Negroes have little satisfactory home life, they expect to have a perfect home in the next life.
Of his finer emotions:
While it is doubtful if there is enough evidence to warrant a full statement concerning the affections of the Negroes, it is apparently based on the gregarious impulse and upon a passive sympathy rather than upon individual emotions intellectually developed. The emotion is rarely of long duration.... The Negro mother rarely mourns for her wandering child, or sits up at night waiting for his return or thinking of him. The father shows little care except that of losing a laborer from his work.... The Negro has no loved ones. Numbers were asked for the names of those whom they considered friends or whom they loved or those who loved them. The question was put in various ways with different subjects, but the returns were the same.... But as a rule the Negro is without friendship among his own people.
It may help to comprehend the range of conclusions found in the literature on the subject of Negro traits of character to note the array of descriptive adjectives employed, thus: sensual, lazy, unobservant, shiftless, unresentful, emotional, shallow, patient, amiable, gregarious, expressive, appropriative, childish, religious, unmoral, immoral, ignorant, mentally inferior, criminal, excitable, imitative, repulsive, poetic, irresponsible, filthy, unintellectual, bumptious, overassertive, superficial, indecent, dependent, untruthful, musical, ungrateful, loyal, sporty, provincial, anthropomorphic, savage, brutish, happy-go-lucky, careless, plastic, docile, apish, inferior, cheerful.
Much might be said of influences which have operated to counteract the opinion-making literature as to the utterly hopeless condition of Negroes. The object of this study, however, is not to attack these conclusions, but merely to cite them as indicating how certain attitudes detrimental to racial friendliness and understanding have had their rise.
In academic circles the more balanced opinions of anthropologists are gaining some headway. Franz Boaz, probably the foremost anthropologist in the United States, in The Mind of Primitive Man, maintains:
Our considerations make it probable that the wide differences between the manifestations of the human mind in various stages of culture may be due almost entirely to the form of individual experience, which is determined by the geographical and social environment of the individual. It would seem that, in different races, the organization of the mind is on the whole alike, and that the variations of mind found in different races do not exceed, perhaps not even reach, the amount of normal individual variation in each race. It has been indicated that, notwithstanding this similarity in the form of individual mental processes, the expression of mental activity of a community tends to show a characteristic historical development.