Following the Color Line / An account of Negro citizenship in the American democracy

by Unknown

Down at the bottom—it will seem trite, but it is eternally true—the cause of the race “problem” and most other social problems is simply lack of understanding and sympathy between man and man. And the remedy is equally simple—a gradual substitution of understanding and sympathy for blind repulsion and hatred.

Consider, for example, the Atlanta riot. Increasing misunderstanding and hatred caused a dreadful explosion and bloodshed. What happened? Instantly the wisest white men in Atlanta invited the wisest coloured men to meet them. They got together: general explanations followed. They found that there had been error on both sides; they found that there were reasonable human beings on both sides. One of the leading white men said: “I did not know there were any such broad-minded Negroes in the South.” In other words, they tried to understand and sympathise with one another. Over and over again men will be found hating Negroes, or Chinamen, or “dagoes,” and yet liking some individual Negro, or Chinaman, or “dago.” When they get acquainted they see that the Negro or Chinaman is a human being like themselves, full of faults, but not devoid of good qualities.

As a fundamental proposition, then, it will be found that the solution of the Negro problem lies in treating the Negro more and more as a human being like ourselves. Treating the Negro as a human being, we must judge him, not by his colour, or by any other outward symbol, but upon his worth as a man. Nothing that fails of that full honesty and fairness of judgment in the smallest particular will suffice. We disgrace and injure ourselves more than we do the Negro when we are not willing to admit virtue or learning or power in another human being because his face happens to be yellow or black.

Of the soundness of this fundamental standard of judgment there can be no doubt; the difficulty lies in applying it practically to society as it is to-day. In the suggestions which I offer here I am trying to do two things: to outline the present programme, and to keep open a clear view to the future goal.

Shall the Negro Vote?

Let us approach, then, without fear the first of the three groups of problems—political, industrial, and social—which confront us.

Shall the Negro vote?

Thousands of Negroes in this country are fully as well equipped, fully as patriotic, as the average white citizen. Moreover, they are as much concerned in the real welfare of the country. The principle that our forefathers fought for, “taxation only with representation,” is as true to-day as it ever was.

On the other hand, the vast majority of Negroes (and many foreigners and “poor whites”) are still densely ignorant, and have little or no appreciation of the duties of citizenship. It seems right that they should be required to wait before being allowed to vote until they are prepared. A wise parent hedges his son about with restrictions; he does not authorise his signature at the bank or allow him to run a locomotive; and until he is twenty-one years old he is disfranchised and has no part in the government. But the parent restricts his son because it seems the wisest course for him, for the family, and for the state that he should grow to manhood before he is burdened with grave responsibilities. So the state limits suffrage; and rightly limits it, so long as it accompanies that limitation with a determined policy of education. But the suffrage law is so executed in the South to-day as to keep many capable Negroes from the exercise of their rights, to prevent recognition of honest merit, and it is executed unjustly as between white men and coloured. It is no condonement of the Southern position to say that the North also disfranchises a large part of the Negro vote by bribery, which it does; it is only saying that the North is also wrong.

As for the agitation for the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, which gives the right of suffrage to the coloured man, it must be met by every lover of justice and democracy with a face of adamant. If there were only one Negro in the country capable of citizenship, the way for him must, at least, be kept open. No doubt full suffrage was given to the mass of Negroes before they were prepared for it, while yet they were slaves in everything except bodily shackles, and the result during the Reconstruction period was disastrous. But the principle of a free franchise—fortunately, as I believe, for this country—has been forever established. If the white man is not willing to meet the Negro in any contest whatsoever without plugging the dice, then he is not the superior but the inferior of the Negro.