In one thing only is there doubt as to our progress, and that is in human development, and racial perfection. The scientists and thinkers of the age are impressed with the fact that there is degeneracy, or at least, “recession,” as it is termed, which means a going back to some unknown evil type that will operate disastrously upon civilization, morals, and general well-being of individuals.
By a remarkable unanimity of opinion, these marks of recession and degeneracy, sometimes called “delinquency,” are limited to the posterity of the Aryan type. Superhuman efforts are making to avert catastrophe by what is known as “selection,” that is, by limiting intermarriages to those who shall have been declared physically and mentally capable of assuming the marriage state. But in the opinion of many, this will still be a further remove from the pure Aryan type, and thus be always descending the human scale. At any rate, there can be no reversion to an ancestral type, because the ancestor himself is mixed, and there is no pure strain to culture up to.
But with the Jews and Africans, there is no such question, because the type remains as it was in the beginning, and it is very easy to make a selection.
THE JEWS HAVE AGES OF LEARNING
The Jews understand this matter and they maintain their own racial standards which are the highest and best. Now, it is up to the African, the ten millions of them in the United States, to adopt the standards of excellence proper to their dignity, and to their purity as one of the original or primary divisions of mankind.
The Jews have ages of learning and wisdom to fall back upon, and the African, although interrupted in his advance, by ages of repression, nevertheless has the ages of high civilization, the reigns of the Queens Candace, the learning of the Egyptians from Ethiopian magi, and the startling wonders and marvels of buried cities and high culture recently unearthed in Africa as a foundation. These ought to be an incentive to him to regain the lost prestige. He has the opportunity now, and there is no one to stay his march upward, on the contrary, there are helping hands everywhere, and incentives such as no other race in the world ever had or will ever have.
He may look back to his ancestral days with as much pride as any other race, and he may point to the magnificent ruins of the departed glories of his race to prove that his origin is to be found in as high a type of civilization as compared to any other race.
THE WORLD’S CONGRESS of RACES
Great Importance of Colored Race in the Tremendous World Upward Movement
One Thousand Delegates from Fifty Different Races Proclaim Uplift of People
In considering the opportunities offered the Colored people of the United States, two things must be constantly borne in mind:
1. That the advance of the world and of the nations toward harmonious action and unity of motives, is purely of the mind and soul and not of the material things of life.