The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the Color Line. But what is the Color Line? It is the practice of the theory that the colored and “weaker” races of the earth shall not be free to follow “their own way of life and of allegiance,” but shall live, work and be governed after such fashion as the dominant white race may decide. Consider for a moment the full meaning of this fact. Of the seventeen hundred million people that dwell on our earth today more than twelve hundred million are colored—black and brown and yellow. The so-called white race is, of course, the superior race. That is to say, it is on top by virtue of its control of the physical force of the worldships, guns, soldiers, money and other resources. By virtue of this control England rules and robs India, Egypt, Africa and the West Indies; by virtue of this control we of the United States can tell Haytians, Hawaiians and Filipinos how much they shall get for their labor and what shall be done in their lands; by virtue of this control Belgium can still say to the Congolese whether they shall have their hands hacked off or their eyes gouged out—and all without any reference to what Africans, Asiatics or other inferior members of the world’s majority may want.
It is thus clear that, as long as the Color Line exists, all the perfumed protestations of Democracy on the part of the white race must be simply downright lying. The cant of “Democracy” is intended as dust in the eyes of white voters, incense on the altar of their own self-love. It furnishes bait for the clever statesmen who hold the destinies of their people in their hands when they go fishing for suckers in the waters of public discussion. But it becomes more and more apparent that Hindus, Egyptians, Africans, Chinese and Haytians have taken the measure of this cant and hypocrisy. And, whatever the white world may think, it will have these peoples to deal with during this twentieth century.
In dealing with them in the past it has been considered sufficient that the white man should listen to his own voice alone in determining what colored peoples should have; and he has, therefore, been trying perpetually to “solve” the problems arising from his own assumption of the role of God. The first and still the simplest method was to kill them off, either by slaughter pure and simple, as in the case of the American Indians and the Congo natives, or by forcibly changing their mode of life, as was done by those pious prudes who killed off the Tasmanians; or by importing among them rum, gin, whiskey and consumption, as has been attempted in the case of the Negroes of Africa and North America. But, unlike the red Indians and Tasmanians, most of these subject peoples have refused to be killed off. Their vitality is too strong.
The second method divides itself into internal and external treatment. The internal treatment consists in making them work, to develop the resources of their ancestral lands, not for themselves, but for their white overlords, so that the national and imperial coffers may be filled to overflowing, while the Hindu ryot, on six cents a day, lives down to the level of the imperialist formula:
“The poor benighted Hindoo,
He does the best he kin do;
He never aches
For chops and steaks
And for clothes he makes his skin do.”
The external treatment consists of girdling them with forts and battleships and holding armies in readiness to fly at their throats upon the least sign of “uppishness” or “impudence.”