In visiting nearly every city of the United States where there are groups of Italians, I have everywhere heard it said by those who had dealings with them: “We have no bad Italians, ours are good, the bad ones are elsewhere.” In Trenton, N. J., you are told that the bad Italians are in Patterson; but when you are there, nearly every one denies the fact and consigns all the bad Italians to New York.
The truth is, that wherever men have had a chance to know the individual Italian, they have discovered that there are good Italians even as there are good Jews and good Slavs, and that there are good and bad in every race.
Naturally, when men apply the warped categoric judgment to another race, particularly when that race is in political or economic competition with them, they are likely to magnify the evil in the character of the race, and rarely even admit the good. That this categoric judgment is seldom just, that it leads to antagonisms which actualize themselves in race riots and wars, is certainly very evident.
I have watched the development of this prejudice against the Japanese, even as I am most anxiously watching it grow against certain European groups which are ethnically more or less differentiated from the native population, and I am not over confident that we shall solve the ethnic problem without much struggle and stress and strain. Indeed, the ethnic problem can be solved only if we have patience, a measure of sympathy and the sense of justice.
There is a subtle force at work, which, to a degree at least, is settling this matter for us—a force which, if we allow it full play, will complete the task whose result will be the miracle of the age.
I call it a miracle, advisedly; for the things which seemed fixed, unchangeable, deeply graven in the nature of certain European races, the products of long ages, vanish in a generation.
Race characteristics which were regarded as biological are found to be sociological; on the outside of the race, if we might so express it, and not on the inside.
The children of the Neapolitans and the Sicilians lose somewhat of their swarthiness; the features lose their sharpness, and as a rule the children grow over the heads of their parents. Indeed, the last named process takes place among natives and aliens alike.
The ethnic differences of even the most strongly marked European races will ultimately disappear; that is, if we have patience and sympathy, and, above all, if we mete out that justice which gives every man a chance, regardless of his nationality or race.
As a nation we do not possess in an abundant degree these qualities; therefore the ethnic problem is one which may yet postpone its solution until that time when indeed there shall be “Peace on Earth and Good Will to Men.”