Almost it might seem in anticipation of this, Thomas says:
“In this age of realism illusions should have no place and especially in a question of such perplexity as this and one involving such vital issues. The Negro above all others should welcome honest criticism, for in so doing, he will discover that those who point out faults are not always actuated by vindictive sentiments and he may learn that timely reproof and wise guidance may be derived even from the censure of enemies.”[270]
With regard to the possibilities of improvement, Thomas believes:
“That rural work constitutes a basis for character building incomparably beyond that of any agency within his (the Negro’s) reach.”[271]
While Thomas’s view concerning the injury to the South of the presence in it of the Negro is more strongly put it is the view expressed by Senator Butler in 1900, and of Senator Barnwell in 1803, in all probability; yet it is a striking fact that in South Carolina, since emancipation, after thirty years of experience, we came back to the view expressed in 1865, and this, in spite of the fact that, as stated by a great authority on the subject:
“It is very convenient for the Southern white man to include everybody with a trace of Negro blood under the general race designation.”[272]
Mr. Stone cannot include South Carolina as contributing to what he styles:
“The combined influence of Northern and Southern white men and of Negroes and mulattoes to perpetuate an absurd and unscientific fiction,”[273]
for the South Carolina law with regard to intermarriage between the races does not include every one with a trace of Negro blood as a Negro. And this brings us up to a consideration of this phase of the question.
The view of T. Thomas Fortune, on the intermarriage of persons of different races, has been cited.