The Americans

by Hugo Münsterberg

There has been another and more important fact. Slowly all party opposition between the whites vanished, and the race question became the sole political issue. To be sure, there have been free-traders and protectionists in the South, and representatives of all other party principles; but all genuine party life flagged and all less important distinctions vanished at the ballot-box when the whites rallied against the blacks, and since the negroes voted invariably with the Republican party, which had set them free, the entire white population of the South has become Democratic. By this political consolidation, the power of the negro has been further restricted.

People have gradually become convinced, however, that political life stagnates when large states have only the one fixed idea, as if hypnotized by the race issue. The need has been felt anew of participating once more in all the great problems which interest the nation and which create the parties. The South looks back longingly on the time when it used to furnish the most brilliant statesmen of the nation. The South has become also aware that so soon as public opinion allows a systematic corruption of the ballot-box, then every kind of selfishness and corruption has an easy chance to creep in.

Let once the election returns be falsified in order to wipe out a negro majority, and they may be falsified the next time in favour of some commercial conspiracy. An abyss opens up which is truly bottomless. So a third period has arrived. In place of nullifying the negro suffrage by illegal means, the South has been thinking out legal measures for limiting it. The Constitution prescribes merely that no one shall be deprived of his vote by reason of his colour, but it has been left to the several states to determine what the other conditions shall be which govern the right to vote. Thus any state is free to place a certain property condition, or to require a certain degree of education from every man who votes; but all such conditions must apply to all inhabitants of the state alike; thus, for instance, in four states, and only in those four, do women enjoy the suffrage. Now the Southern States have commenced to make extensive use of this state privilege. They are not allowed to exclude the negro as a negro since the Northern States have added the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution, and there would be no hope of altering this. But so long as the educational status of the negro is so far behind that of the white man, the number of those who cannot read is still so large that a heavy blow is struck at negro political domination when a state decides to restrict the suffrage to those who can read and understand the Constitution. It is clear that at the same time the test of this which necessarily has to be made leaves the coveted free-play to the white man’s discretion.

The last few years have witnessed a great advance of this new movement. The political power of the negro is less than ever, and the former illegal measures to circumvent it are no longer needed. It cannot be denied that in two ways this works directly in the interests of civilization. On the one hand, it incites the negro population to take measures for the education of its children, since by going to school the negro can comply with the conditions of suffrage. On the other hand, it frees Southern politics from the oppressive race question, and allows real party problems to become once more active issues among the whites. The political contrast is, therefore, to-day somewhat lessened, although both parties regard it rather as a mere cessation of hostilities; since it is by no means certain that Northern political forces at Washington will not once more undo this infringement on the negroes’ rights, and whether once more, in case of a real party division between the Southern whites, the negroes will not have the deciding vote. If the doctrinarianism of the North should actually prevail and be able to set aside these examinations in reading and in intelligence which have been aimed against the negro, on the ground that they are contrary to the Constitution, it would indeed frustrate a great movement toward political peace. When the abolitionists at the end of the Civil War granted the suffrage to the negroes, they were at least able to adduce one very good excuse; they claimed that the Southern States would continue in some new form to hold the negro in subjection if he was not protected by either a military guard or by his right to vote, and since the army was to be disbanded the right to vote was given him. To-day there is no such danger; the legal exclusion of the Southern negro from the ballot-box must be accounted an advance.

The social question, however, is even more important to-day than the political one, and it is one which grows day by day. We have said already that the Southerner has no instinctive aversion to the negro race, and his desire for racial purity is not an instinct but a theory, of which the fathers of the present white man knew nothing. To be sure, the situation cannot be simply formulated, but it probably comes nearest to the truth to say that the white man’s hatred is the inherited instinct of the slave-holder. In all his sentiments the Southerner is dominated by the once natural feeling that the negro is his helpless subject. The white man is not cruel in this; he wants to protect the negro and to be kind, but he can allow him no will of his own. He has accustomed himself to the slavish obedience of the negro, as the opium-eater is accustomed to his opium. And to give up the paralyzing drug is intolerable to his nervous system.

The everywhere repeated cry that the purity of the race is in danger, if social equality is established, is only a pretext; it is in truth the social equality itself which calls forth the hysterical excitement. No white man, for instance, in the South would go into the dining-room of a hotel in which a single negro woman should be sitting; but this is not because a mere proximity would be disagreeable, as it would actually be to the Northerner, but because he could not endure such appearance of equality. So soon as a little white child sits beside the negro woman, so that she is seen to be a servant and her socially inferior station is made plain, then her presence is no longer felt to be at all disagreeable.

In his fight against social equality with the negro, the Southerner resorts to more and more violent means; and while he works himself up to an increasing pitch of excitement by the energy of his opposition, the resulting social humiliation increases the embitterment of the negro. That no white hotel, restaurant, theatre, or sleeping-car is open to the black is a matter of course; this is virtually true also in the North. But it has contributed very much to renewed disaffection, that also the ordinary railroad trains and street cars begin to make a similar distinction.

The South is putting a premium on every kind of harsh social affront to the black man, and relentlessly punishes the slightest social recognition. When the president of a negro college was the guest of a Northern hotel and the chamber-maid refused to put his room to rights and was therefore dismissed, the South got together, by a popular subscription, a large purse for this heroine. It is only from this point of view that one can understand the great excitement which swept through the South when President Roosevelt had the courage to invite to his table Booker T. Washington, the most distinguished negro of the country. Professor Basset, the historian, has declared, amid the fierce resentment of the South, that, with the exception of General Lee, Booker Washington is the greatest man who has been born in the South for a hundred years. But who inquires after the merits of a single man when the principle of social inequality is at stake? If the President had worked for several months from early to late at his desk with Booker T. Washington, the fact would have passed unnoticed. But it is simply unpardonable that he invited him to the luncheon table, and even very thoughtful men have shaken their heads in the opinion that this affront to the social superiority of the white man will very sadly sharpen the mutual antagonism.

We must not overlook in this connection the various minor circumstances which have strengthened the lingering feeling of the slave-owner. First of all, there is the unrestrained sensuality of the negro, which has led him time after time to attempt criminal aggressions on white women, and so contributed infinitely to the misery of his situation. It is a gross exaggeration when the Southern demagogue reiterates again and again that no man in the South can feel that his wife, his sister, or daughter is secure from the bestiality of the blacks; and yet it cannot be denied that such crimes are shockingly frequent, and they are the more significant, since the continual fear of this danger seriously threatens the growth of farming life with its lonely farm-houses. Here the barbarities of lynch law have come in, and the rapid growth of racial hatred may be seen in the increased number of lynchings during recent years. But every lynching reacts to inoculate hatred and cruel ferocity in the public organism, and so the bestial instincts and the lawless punishments work together to debase the masses in the Southern States.

It is not only a question of the immorality of the negro and the lynch courts of the white man, but in other ways the negro shows himself inclined to crime, and the white man to all sorts of lawless acts against him. The negroes are disproportionately represented in Southern prisons, although this comes partly from the fact that the black man is punished for the slightest misdemeanour, while the white man is readily let off. In fact, it is difficult in the South to find a jury to convict a white man of any crime done against a negro. This application of a two-fold standard of justice leads quickly to a general arbitrariness which fits only too well with the natural instincts of the slave-holder. Arbitrary privileges in place of equal rights have always been the essential point in his existence, and so it happens that even where no negroes are in question Southern juries hand down verdicts which scandalize the whole country. Indeed, there is no doubt that secret attempts have even been made, in all sorts of devious forms, to re-establish the state of slavery. For some small misdemeanour negroes are condemned to pay a very heavy fine, and to furnish this they have to let themselves out to some sort of contract labour under white masters, which amounts to the same thing as slavery. Here again the whole country is horrified when the facts come to be known. But no means have yet been thought of for lessening the bitter hatred which exists, and so long as the sharp social contrast remains there will continue to be evasions and violations of the law, to give vent to the hatred and bitter feeling.