By Secretary A.F. Beard.
In the relationship of the races we are accustomed to speak of the "color prejudice." We know very well that there is a most assertive prejudice against colored people. Rev. Dr. Wright, in his admirable address at Chicago, said, "The cause is this: All free-born people in every age and clime have a contempt for slaves. The sole reason of the persistence of the caste feeling is that the black man belongs to a race which has been enslaved." The inference is, "therefore your character is a servile character."
The common judgment has been that the prejudice is against color. A little observation, however, will show that Southern people have no prejudice against color as such. Color ceases to be repugnant when it ceases to be unfamiliar.
I have been led to conclude that a great part of what is called the color prejudice, may be charged up to the fact of feature. The features, in the people of every race, are offensive when they are coarse and carnal. For example, among a class of the Irish peasantry long ignorance and lowdown life have given to the children an heredity of ingrained coarseness. It is visible in a certain stamp of the features. Education and elevation will gradually reduce the animalism of the face. With good breeding, in generations the lips grow thinner; the face takes on character and even changes in shape.
The Negro condition at present is one of immaturity. The Uncle Rastus side of Negro character and life may be seen every day in the Southern Negro. The immaturity of the race and its revelation and expression in feature and in character, repel more than color does. The antipathy against color in the South is reduced to its very lowest terms, as facts prove.
The way to destroy the prejudice which exists both by association with the ideas of bondage and by features which are not refined, is a common one. Education is the only way. I have been surprised to see how rapidly education, especially religious education and the refining influence of good associations, are eliminating both the idea that color is a badge of a servile mind, and the inherited coarseness of features. The educated children of educated parents are in many instances already showing in their faces the mettle of their pasture. There is a perceptible growth away from immaturity and coarseness of feature, along with the growth away from immaturity of mind.
Twenty-five years, indeed, is a short time for a study of this sort. It is hardly to be counted in the history of a race. A century is but a unit in the problem of a people's history. We have no right to form our judgments yet, as to the place the Negro people may take. What three or four centuries may do for the race is to be settled too remotely for us to testify.
A distinguished educator lately said that he had been disappointed in the intellectual ability and resources of the Negro. The race had not shown itself to be hopeful. I reply, if in twenty-five years we have the few remarkable instances of advancement and attainment which appear, together with a very large general uplift in education and character, may not these facts be the prophecies and pledges of a future that shall not be inferior.
Even now the difference between the uneducated and the educated black man is very striking. The crudeness and the unrefinement in feature are not necessary accompaniments of color. Thick lips do not inherently belong with a dark skin. Coarseness of feature belongs to white people, long degraded, as well, and is to be eliminated in them also by the evolution which takes place in schools and churches.
Here is a race from original heathenism which has come through two hundred years of the darkness of slavery, set free in exceedingly unhelpful conditions, and shut in for the most part to association with illiteracy, bad manners, bad morals and bad habits. Only exceptionally can colored people come near enough to those who are high and good to get much good by seeing what goodness is and how it lives.