Jim Crow Laws
As for the Jim Crow laws in the South, many of them, at least, are at present necessary to avoid the danger of clashes between the ignorant of both race. They are the inevitable scaffolding of progress. As a matter of fact, the Negro has profited in one way by such laws. For the white man has thus driven the Negroes together, forced ability to find its outlet in racial leadership, and by his severity produced a spirit of self-reliance which would not otherwise have existed. Dr. Frissell of Hampton is always talking to his students of the “advantages of disadvantages.”
As for laws against the intermarriage of the races, they do not prevent what they are designed to prevent: the mixing of white and coloured blood. In many parts of the South, despite the existence of such laws, miscegenation, though decreasing rapidly, still continues. On the other hand, in the North, where Negroes and whites may marry, there is actually very little marriage and practically no concubinage. The solution of this question, too, lies far more in education than in law. As a matter of fact, the more education both races receive, the less the amalgamation. In the South, as in the North, the present tendency of the educated and prosperous Negroes is to build up a society of their own, entirely apart from and independent of white people. As I have shown in a former chapter, a white woman in the North who marries a Negro is declassed—ostracised by both races. The danger of amalgamation lies with ignorant and vicious people, black or white, not with educated and sensitive people.
As in the case of the Jim Crow laws, separate schools in the South are necessary, and in one way I believe them to be of great advantage to the Negroes themselves. In Northern cities like Indianapolis and New York, where there are no separation laws of any kind, separate schools have appeared, naturally and quietly, in districts where the Negro population is dense. That the pupils in each should be treated with exact justice in the matter of expenditures by the state is axiomatic. And the Negro boy should have the same unbounded opportunity for any sort of education he is capable of using as the white boy; nothing less will suffice.
One influence at present growing rapidly will have its profound effect on the separation laws. Though a tendency exists toward local segregation of Negroes to which I have already referred, there is also a counter-tendency toward a scattering of Negroes throughout the entire country. The white population in the South, now 20,000,000 against 9,000,000 Negroes, is increasing much more rapidly than the Negro population. The death-rate of Negroes is exceedingly high; and the sharper the conditions of competition with white workers, the greater will probably be the limitation of increase of the more inefficient Negro population.
As for the predictions of “amalgamation,” “a mongrel people,” “black domination,” and other bogies of prophecy, we must not, as I see it, give them any weight whatsoever. We cannot regulate our short lives by the fear of something far in the future which will probably never happen at all. All we can do is to be right at this moment and let the future take care of itself; it will anyway. There is no other sane method of procedure. Much as we may desire it, the future arrangement of this universe is not in our hands. As to the matter of “superiority” or “inferiority,” it is not a subject of argument at all; nor can we keep or attain “superiority” by laws or colour lines, or in any other way, except by being superior. If we are right, absolutely right, in the eternal principles, we can rest in peace that the matter of our superiority will take care of itself.
The Real Solution of the Negro Problem
I remember asking a wise Southern man I met what, in his opinion, was the chief factor in the solution of the Negro problem.
“Time,” he said, “and patience.”
But time must be occupied with discipline and education—more and more education, not less education, education that will teach first of all the dignity of service not only for Negroes but for white men. The white man, South and North, needs it quite as much as the coloured man. And this is exactly the programme of the new Southern statesmanship of which I spoke in a former chapter. These wise Southerners have resolved to forget the discouragements and complexities of the Negro problem, forget even their disagreements, and go to work on present problems: the development of education and industry.