The negro: the southerner's problem

by Thomas Nelson Page

The answer is simple. None, but to leave it to work itself out along the lines of economic laws, with such aid as may be rendered by an enlightened public spirit and a broad-minded patriotism. The solution proposed so glibly by ignorant doctrinaires is like the nostrum of the quack—good only for fools. The single solution that can really solve it is that which time alone can disclose—the natural and imperative resultant of the forces represented in the two races. The racial traits, instincts, and forces which have governed and propelled them since the dawn of history will in all human probability still control and propel them so long as they exist as races.

One fact that may be stated with some degree of assurance is that there is no one universal Negro problem or question except the single one constituted by the existence in the same country of two populous and fecund races, essentially and, perhaps, radically different in their history, manners, life, and instincts. In fact, the problems are almost as numerous and as various as the communities where the two races exist side by side. For example, one problem exists where the races are equally educated; another, where they are equally ignorant; a third, where the one race or the other is in numerical superiority; yet another, where the members of either race are of one class or another. All of these things have to be fully considered in determining the various questions that seem to be inherent in the subject, and any positive formulation of one set of conditions may readily be met by the production of a partially if not a totally different set of conditions.

Out of all these questions, as has been stated, but one essentially common to the whole obtrudes itself: Whether two races, like the white race and the black, with such histories and such characteristics as those races have, can continue permanently to live together under conditions similar to those which exist in the United States with mutual benefit to both?

On the proper answer to this question depends our future, both as a people and as a nation. Next to the question of Representative government, this would appear to be the most vital and fundamental question that exists within the limits of the United States to-day. Hinging upon it are such subordinate questions as representation, personal security, freedom of speech, race integrity, national strength and permanency, and, possibly, even national existence.

The Negro race has already doubled three times in the United States since the beginning of the last century, and, unless conditions change, it is possible that before the end of the century there may be between sixty and eighty millions of Negroes in this country; a situation which will tax all, and more than all, of the wisdom and constancy of the white race.

In fact, the situation is already too serious to be disposed of without the expenditure of all the courage, wisdom, and patriotism of the entire white race in America, or, at least, without more than they have yet shown. Hitherto, the Negro race has been treated on the one side as an amiable and servile class, useful under regulation and direction to furnish the labor of a great section, and on the other side as a pliable class, useful under certain conditions as a weapon to punish or control the opposite party. The one section has leaned decidedly to keeping the Negro as a mere laborer; the other has leaned with firmness to using him for its own advantage. But, when the Negro race shall reach the numbers suggested, new questions will have arisen. The question then will be, “What shall be done with this colored population of sixty to eighty millions of souls?”

It is true that prognostications of increase in a population often fail, but judging the future by the past and taking into account known racial characteristics, it would appear that the number thus prophesied will in all human probability exist in the United States by the end of the century. If it does exist, it is useless for us of the present generation to blink our eyes to the gravity of the situation.

The answer at present would appear to be alternative: either they must live separately among us—that is, a people within a people, separate and distinct—or they must be amalgamated and mixed in with the whites; or, they must be removed and still live separate and distinct, whether in some country beyond the confines of the United States, or in some portion of this country which shall be given up to them.

It is not believed by those best acquainted with the subject that the solution of the race question will ever be along the lines of amalgamation. That there will be some intermixture is doubtless true, but unless all observations are erroneous, while the percentage of mulattoes in the total Negro population has increased, this increase is mainly due to the intermixture of the white with the mulatto, or of the mulatto with the pure Negro, and the intermixture between the pure Negro and the pure white is growing less all the time.

“The general conclusion,” says the Director of the Department of Commerce and Labor of the Census Bureau, after giving tables of increasing per cent. of mulattoes to total Negro population of the several divisions of the country, “seems warranted that the proportion of mulattoes to total Negroes was found by the enumerators to be high or low, according as the proportion of whites to Negroes is high or low. That is, it appears that where the whites are in large numbers and the Negroes in small numbers, the proportion of mulattoes to Negroes is likely to be higher than where the whites are in small numbers and the Negroes in large numbers.”