"President Phillips, living in a section of the country where negroes are few—especially such as are of sufficient intelligence to be interesting to a man of his attainments—does not dream of amalgamation. I would not insult him by assuming such a thing. And yet upon a superficial estimate of conditions in the South he gives us this impulsive exhibition of what in one of his high official position is criminal carelessness.
"The positive element of crime in it is not in the affront which a Presidential negro luncheon puts upon Southern sentiment, but in the suggestion to Southern and Northern people alike that a social intermingling of the races—which means amalgamation, however blind he may be to the fact—is the solution of the race problem. The crime would be complete in all its horror if the South, if the nation, should follow his lead and achieve the logical result of his teaching.
"From long and intimate acquaintance with the negro's character, my people know that the Phillips negro luncheon stimulates not the negro's ambition and endeavour to improve himself as it tickles and arouses his vanity. When the ordinary darkey hears of it he thinks it not a recognition of the superior abilities of Bishop Martin and Doctor Woods, but a social recognition of the negro race; and forthwith deems himself the equal of the white man and desires unutterable things. And not without reason.
"The black people appreciate what the President's act means for them. They do not misinterpret its tendency. A prominent negro said in a recent mass meeting in Richmond: 'No two peoples having the same religion and speaking the same tongue, living together, have ever been kept apart. This is well known and is one of the reasons why the dominant race is crushing out the strength of the negro in the South. I am afraid we are anarchistic and I give warning that if this oppression in the South continues the negro must resort to the torch and the sword, and that the Southland will become a land of blood and desolation.'
"This inflammatory utterance indicates the interpretation put by negroes upon President Phillips' open-dining-room-door policy, and the nature of the hopes and aspirations it arouses in the black man's heart. And the serious thing is the element of truth in the negro's erroneous statement. It is true as gospel that no two races of people, living together, have ever intermingled socially without amalgamating. It is hardly necessary to cite evidence of that fact or to give the reasons underlying it. It might be taken as axiomatic that social intermingling means amalgamation.
"If men and women were attracted to each other and loved and mated because of equal endowments of virtue, or intelligence, or beauty, or upon any basis of similar accomplishments, tastes, or mental, moral or physical excellences, then a gulf-stream of Anglo-Saxon blood might flow unmixed and pure through a sea of social contact with the negro race; but until love and marriage are placed among the exact sciences, social intermingling of races will ever result as it ever has resulted: in the general admixture of racial bloods.
"When racial barriers are broken down and it is proper for negroes and whites to associate freely and intimately, when you—white men—receive negroes on a plane of social equality, your women will marry them, your sons will take them to wife. Shall you say to your daughter of the negro whom you receive in your home: 'He is an excellent man but—do not marry him'? Shall you say to your son enamoured of a quadroon: 'She is a very worthy young woman and an ornament to our circle of friends, but—I have chosen another wife for you'? When did such considerations ever guide or curb the fancy of the youthful heart or diminish the travel to Gretna Green? No, the line never has been drawn between free social intercourse and intermarriage; and while the Southern people believe they could draw that line if any people could, they do not propose to make any reckless experiments where all is to be lost and nothing gained.
"A president of one of our great universities is quoted as saying: 'The Southern white sees a race danger in eating at the same table with a negro; he sees in being the host or the guest of a negro an act of race infidelity. The Northern white sees nothing of the kind. The race danger does not enter into his thoughts at all. To be the host or the guest of a negro, a Mexican or a Japanese would be for him simply a matter of present pleasure, convenience or courtesy. It would never occur to him that such an act could possibly harm his own race. His pride of race does not permit him to entertain such an idea. This is a significant difference between Northern white and Southern white.'
"In noting significant differences between Northern white and Southern white this authority must have been advertent to the fact that the pride of race of his 'Northern white' does not prevent them from furnishing the overwhelming majority of interracial marriages with negroes, as well as with Chinese, Japanese and every other alien race—this, too, with a very small negro population. If the negroes were proportionately as numerous in the North as in the South and such sentiments prevailed, how long, with interracial marriages increased in numbers in proportion to opportunity, would there be an Anglo-Saxon 'Northern white' to have a pride of race? If with these facts before his eyes the distinguished educator sees no race danger in the social mingling of white and black people, it easily may be inferred that he sees no objection to amalgamation.
"The Southern white man does see a race danger in these social amenities, Mr. President; for he cannot view amalgamation or the faintest prospect of it with any sentiment save horror: and he fortifies himself against that danger not only with the peculiar pride of race—of which he has a comfortable supply—but with every expedient suggested by his common sense, his experience, and by the horrible example which that distinguished educator's 'Northern white' has furnished him.