Thoughts on South Africa

by Olive Schreiner

The fact, then, that interbreeding between men of European blood causes no deterioration, or is of marked benefit, has no necessary bearing whatever on the question as to what will result from the crossing of widely severed human varieties; varieties so distinct that to find the progenital link between them we might have to travel up the lines of human life till we reached those early forms in which articulate speech was only in process of development, differences which are to-day, even in the fœtal condition, unmistakably distinct.

We have dwelt at this considerable length on this matter because it is well we should attempt to look impartially on both sides of a question of so vital import to the inhabitants of Africa, both in the present and in the future. And it must be borne in mind that even among animals not all the crossed descendants of widely separated varieties show this tendency to revert to the primitive type, but merely that there is a general tending for them to do so, and that there may be in any given case other conditions which would entirely defeat the working of the law.[36]

Summing up, then, what we know on this matter, with all the impartiality of which we are capable of, this one thing only seems certain—that there do exist in the social conditions of the Half-caste's existence, in almost every country in which he is found, causes adequate, and more than adequate, to account for all, and more than all, the retrograde and anti-social qualities with which he is credited; and that therefore in spite of the fact that there do exist certain circumstances which suggest the possibility of the crossing of widely discovered varieties producing a tendency to revert to the most primitive ancestral forms of both, yet, until science has been able to demonstrate that not social conditions, but a congenital defect, has made the Half-caste what we find him, the balanced and impartial mind, in answer to the popular accusation against him of congenital anti-sociality, can bring in only one verdict, that of—Not Proven.

If it be inquired what profit we gain from this analysis of the Half-caste, seeing that, whether it be the result of inheritance or of external conditions, it is equally allowed that he has a tendency to certain anti-sociality, we would reply that the benefit is great.

Firstly:—There is a marked, though more or less illogical, tendency in human nature to regard with greater aversion an individual whose defects, whether physical or mental, are the result of conditions long preceding their birth and fixed by inheritance, than an individual in whom they are not inherent. As a hunchback, so made by some accident after birth, is more kindly regarded than one who is so born; so, if it be once grasped that the defects of the Half-caste may not be inherent, but may be the result of post-natal conditions, there will undoubtedly be a tendency on the part of many to regard him with greater kindliness.

Secondly:—It is all important, socially, that the fact should be distinctly brought home to us, both as individuals and collectively as a society, that the mingling of our breeds, whether through the action of reversion or of the external conditions, is frequently the cause of the production of persons with a low degree of sociality, and therefore—is almost always distinctly anti-social.

Thirdly:—An analysis of the condition of the Half-caste brings home to us, as nothing else can do, our own racial responsibility towards him.

The Bushman, Hottentot, and Bantu were here long years before we arrived; the powers and forces which created and placed them here asked no permission from us; we are at liberty to assert that had our advice been asked not one would ever have been created or placed in South Africa.

It is not so with the Half-caste; Englishman and Dutchman, we brought his ancestor here for our own purposes—if we except the few Half-castes descended from Hottentots and Bantus this is true; Boer and later Englishman, we inoculated him with our virile blood to make him permanent. He is here, our own; we have made him; we cannot wash our hands of him.

When from under the beetling eyebrows in a dark face something of the white man's eye looks out at us, is not the curious shrinking and aversion we feel somewhat of a consciousness of a national disgrace and sin?