DuBois’s, expressed with temperance, is as follows:
“Among the best classes of Negroes and whites, such marriages seldom occur.”[274]
Yet he maintains that:
“Any legislation against it, is inconsistent with the principle of freedom of choice in a matter exclusively pertaining to the individual.”
Twenty years later, in “The Comet”, he allowed his fancy fuller play.
When Thomas reaches this point in his discussion, we find neither the extravagant expression of Fortune, nor the apparently varying views and fancies of DuBois. Thomas says:
“There is no doubt that judicious race amalgamation is capable of exercising a profound and far reaching influence upon inferior types of people. Degenerate people are always improved by an infusion of virile blood; but the benefits derived from wise race admixture are to be found in transmitted capacity not color.... The redemption of the Negro is impossible through any process of physical amalgamation; it is possible and assured through a thorough assimilation of the thoughts and ideals of American civilization.”[275]
Now, as has been shown, Washington thought a color prejudice a thing to be lamented, and yet he preached for years for the Negroes to remain in the South; where Thomas says:
“There is more absolute social equality and personal freedom in the intermingling of the races than has ever been obtained in the North, where, in the main the public social rights of the Negro are respected.”[276]
From which Thomas argues: