But the South is rapidly shaking off the remnants of the old feudalism. Development of mines and forests, the extension of manufacturing, the introduction of European immigrants, the inflow of white Northerners, better schools, more railroads and telephones, are all helping to bring the South up to the economic standard of the North. There will be a further break-up of baronial tenant farming, the plantation store will disappear, the ruinous credit system will be abolished, and there will be a widespread appearance of independent farm-owners, both white and black. This will all tend to remove the personal and sentimental attitude of the old Southern life; the Negro will of necessity be judged more and more as a man, not as a slave or dependent. In short, the country, South and North, will become economically more homogeneous.
But even when the South reaches the industrial development of the North the Negro problem will not be solved; it is certainly not solved in New York or Philadelphia, where industrial development has reached its highest form. The prejudice in those cities, as I have shown, has been growing more intense as Negro population increased. What, then, will happen?
Two Elements in Every Race Problem
Two elements appear in every race problem: the first, race prejudice—the repulsion of the unlike; second, economic or competitive jealousy. Both operate, for example, in the case of the Irishman or Italian, but with the Negro and Chinaman race prejudice is greater because the difference is greater. The difficulty of the Negro in this country is the colour of his skin, the symbol of his difference. In China the difficulty of the white trader is his whiteness, his difference. Race lines, in short, are drawn by white men, not because the other race is inferior (the Japanese and Chinese are in many ways our superiors), nor because of criminality (certain classes of foreigners are more criminal in our large cities than the Negroes), nor because of laziness, but because of discernible physical differences—black skin, almond eyes, pigtails, hook noses, a peculiar bodily odour, or small stature. That dislike of a different people is more or less instinctive in all men.
A tendency has existed on the part of Northern students who have no first-hand knowledge of the masses of Negroes to underestimate the force of race repulsion; on the other hand, the Southern student who is confronted with the Negroes themselves is likely to overestimate racial repulsion and underestimate economic competition as a cause of the difficulty. The profoundest question, indeed, is to decide how much of the so-called problem is due to race repulsion and how much to economic competition.
This leads us to the most sinister phase of the race problem. As I have shown, we have the two elements of conflict: instinctive race repulsion and competitive jealousy. What is easier for the race in power, the white race in this country (the yellow race in Asia) than to play upon race instinct in order to serve selfish ends? How shrewdly the labour union, whether in San Francisco or Atlanta, seizes upon that race hatred to keep the black or yellow man out of the union and thereby control all the work for its members! Race prejudice played upon becomes a tool in clinching the power of the labour monopoly.
How the politician in the South excites race hatred in order that he may be elected to office! Vardaman governed because he could make men hate one another more bitterly than his opponent. The Rev. Thomas Dixon has appealed in his books and plays to the same passion.
In several places in this country Negroes have been driven out by mobs—not because they were criminal, or because they were bad citizens, but because they were going into the grocery and drug business, they were becoming doctors, dentists, and the like, and taking away the trade of their white competitors. So the stores and restaurants of highly efficient Japanese were wrecked in San Francisco.
What is easier or cruder to use as a weapon for crushing a rival than the instinctive dislike of man for man? And that usage is not peculiar to the white man. In Africa the black man wastes no time with the different-looking white man; he kills him, if he dares, on the spot. And how ably the Chinaman has employed the instinctive hatred of his countrymen for “foreign devils” in order to fight American trade and traders! We hate the Chinaman and drive him out, and he hates us and drives us out.
Chief Danger of Race Prejudice