Birthright: A Novel

by T. S. Stribling

Peter gave up his question. The curves of Cissie's form in his arm held a sweetness and a restfulness that her maidenhood had never promised. He felt so deeply sure of his happiness that it seemed strange to him that he could not aline his emotions and his mind.

As Peter stood staring up the Ohio River, it occurred to him that perhaps, in some queer way, the morals of black folk were not the morals of white folk; perhaps the laws that bound one race were not the laws that bound the other. It might be that white anathemas were black blessings. Peter thought along this line peacefully for several minutes.

And finally he concluded that, after all, morals and conventions, right and wrong, are merely those precepts that a race have practised and found good in its evolution. Morals are the training rules that keep a people fit. It might very well be that one moral régime is applicable to one race, and quite another to another.

The single object of all morals is racial welfare, the racial integrity, the breeding of strong children to perpetuate the species. If the black race possess a more exuberant vitality than some other race, then the black would not be forced to practise so severe a vital economy as some less virile folk. Racial morals are simply a question of having and spending within safety limits.

Peter knew that for years white men had held a prejudice against marrying widows. This is utterly without grounds except for one reason: the first born of a woman is the lustiest. Among the still weaker Aryans of India the widows burn themselves. Among certain South Sea Islanders only the first-born may live and mate; all other children are slain. Among nearly every white race marriage lines are strictly drawn, and the tendency is to have few children to a family, to conserve the precious vital impulse. So strong is this feeling of birth control that to-day nearly all American white women are ashamed of large families. This shame is the beginning of a convention; the convention may harden into a cult, a law, or a religion.

And here is the amazing part of morals. Morals are always directed toward one particular race, but the individual members of that race always feel that their brand of morals does and should apply to all the peoples of the earth; so one has the spectacle of nations sending out missionaries and battle-ships to teach and enforce their particular folk-ways. Another queer thing is that whereas the end of morals is designed solely for the betterment of the race, and is entirely regardless of the person, to the conscience of the person morals are always translated as something that binds him personally, that will shame him or honor him personally not only for the brief span of this worldly life, but through an eternity to come. To him, his particular code, surrounded by all the sanctions of custom, law, and religion, appears earth-embracing, hell-deep, and heaven-piercing, and any human creature who follows any other code appears fatally wicked, utterly shameless, and ineluctably lost.

And yet there is no such thing as absolute morals. Morals are as transitory as the sheen on a blackbird's wing; they change perpetually with the necessities of the race. Any people with an abounding vitality will naturally practise customs which a less vital people must shun.

Morals are nothing more than the engines controlling the stream of energy that propel a race on its course. All engines are not alike, nor are all races bound for the same port.

Here Peter Siner made the amazing discovery that although he had spent four years in Harvard, he had come out, just as he went in, a negro.

A great joy came over him. He took Cissie whole-heartedly in his arms and kissed again and again the deep crimson of her lips. His brain and his heart were together at last. As he stood looking out at the window, pressing Cissie to him, he wondered, when he reached Chicago, if he could ever make Farquhar understand.