Introduction to the Science of Sociology

by Robert Ezra Park; E. W. Burgess

Since 1870 the conditions which I have attempted to sketch have steadily forced upon America and the nations of Europe the problem of assimilating their heterogeneous populations. What we call the race problem is at once an incident of this process of assimilation and an evidence of its failure.

The present volume, The Japanese Invasion: A Study in the Psychology of Inter-racial Contact, touches but does not deal with the general situation which I have briefly sketched. It is, as its title suggests, a study in "racial contacts," and is an attempt to distinguish and trace to their sources the attitudes and the sentiments—that is to say, mutual prejudices—which have been and still are a source of mutual irritation and misunderstanding between the Japanese and American peoples.

Fundamentally, prejudice against the Japanese in the United States is merely the prejudice which attaches to every alien and immigrant people. The immigrant from Europe, like the immigrant from Asia, comes to this country because he finds here a freedom of individual action and an economic opportunity which he did not find at home. It is an instance of the general tendency of populations to move from an area of relatively closed, to one of relatively open, resources. The movement is as inevitable and, in the long run, as resistless as that which draws water from its mountain sources to the sea. It is one way of redressing the economic balance and bringing about an economic equilibrium.

The very circumstances under which this modern movement of population has arisen implies then that the standard of living, if not the cultural level, of the immigrant is lower than that of the native population. The consequence is that immigration brings with it a new and disturbing form of competition, the competition, namely, of peoples of a lower and of a higher standard of living. The effect of this competition, where it is free and unrestricted, is either to lower the living standards of the native population; to expel them from the vocations in which the immigrants are able or permitted to compete; or what may, perhaps, be regarded as a more sinister consequence, to induce such a restriction of the birth rate of the native population as to insure its ultimate extinction. The latter is, in fact, what seems to be happening in the New England manufacturing towns where the birth rate in the native population for some years past has fallen below the death rate, so that the native stock has long since ceased to reproduce itself. The foreign peoples, on the other hand, are rapidly replacing the native stocks, not merely by the influence of new immigration, but because of a relatively high excess of births over deaths.

It has been assumed that the prejudice which blinds the people of one race to the virtues of another and leads them to exaggerate that other's faults is in the nature of a misunderstanding which further knowledge will dispel. This is so far from true that it would be more exact to say that our racial misunderstandings are merely the expression of our racial antipathies. Behind these antipathies are deep-seated, vital, and instinctive impulses. Racial antipathies represent the collision of invisible forces, the clash of interests, dimly felt but not yet clearly perceived. They are present in every situation where the fundamental interests of races and peoples are not yet regulated by some law, custom, or any other modus vivendi which commands the assent and the mutual support of both parties. We hate people because we fear them, because our interests, as we understand them at any rate, run counter to theirs. On the other hand, good will is founded in the long run upon co-operation. The extension of our so-called altruistic sentiments is made possible only by the organization of our otherwise conflicting interests and by the extension of the machinery of co-operation and social control.

Race prejudice may be regarded as a spontaneous, more or less instinctive, defense-reaction, the practical effect of which is to restrict free competition between races. Its importance as a social function is due to the fact that free competition, particularly between people with different standards of living, seems to be, if not the original source, at least the stimulus to which race prejudice is the response.

From this point of view we may regard caste, or even slavery, as one of those accommodations through which the race problem found a natural solution. Caste, by relegating the subject race to an inferior status, gives to each race at any rate a monopoly of its own tasks. When this status is accepted by the subject people, as is the case where the caste or slavery systems become fully established, racial competition ceases and racial animosity tends to disappear. That is the explanation of the intimate and friendly relations which so often existed in slavery between master and servant. It is for this reason that we hear it said today that the Negro is all right in his place. In his place he is a convenience and not a competitor. Each race being in its place, no obstacle to racial co-operation exists.

The fact that race prejudice is due to, or is in some sense dependent upon, race competition is further manifest by a fact that Mr. Steiner has emphasized, namely, that prejudice against the Japanese is nowhere uniform throughout the United States. It is only where the Japanese are present in sufficient numbers to actually disturb the economic status of the white population that prejudice has manifested itself to such a degree as to demand serious consideration. It is an interesting fact also that prejudice against the Japanese is now more intense than it is against any other oriental people. The reason for this, as Mr. Steiner has pointed out, is that the Japanese are more aggressive, more disposed to test the sincerity of that statement of the Declaration of Independence which declares that all men are equally entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"—a statement, by the way, which was merely a forensic assertion of the laissez faire doctrine of free and unrestricted competition as applied to the relations of individual men.

The Japanese, the Chinese, they too would be all right in their place, no doubt. That place, if they find it, will be one in which they do not greatly intensify and so embitter the struggle for existence of the white man. The difficulty is that the Japanese is still less disposed than the Negro or the Chinese to submit to the regulations of a caste system and to stay in his place. The Japanese are an organized and morally efficient nation. They have the national pride and the national egotism which rests on the consciousness of this efficiency. In fact, it is not too much to say that national egotism, if one pleases to call it such, is essential to national efficiency, just as a certain irascibility of temper seems to be essential to a good fighter.

Another difficulty is that caste and the limitation of free competition is economically unsound, even though it be politically desirable. A national policy of national efficiency demands that every individual have not merely the opportunity but the preparation necessary to perform that particular service for the community for which his natural disposition and aptitude fit him, irrespective of race or "previous condition."