The Negro Faces America. By Herbert J. Seligmann, formerly Member of the Editorial Staffs of the New York Evening Post and the New Republic. New York and London, Harper and Brothers, 1920. Pp. iv., 319. Price, $1.75 net.
"There is, in fact, no race problem in the United States." A sociological study which within its first four pages makes this assertion must gain the reader's attention and interest at the start. That there is no solution to the race problem is a statement heard so often in America that it has become almost proverbial; that the solution is simple if our citizens would approach the problem fairly is an observation made less often; but that there is no problem would seem to be either the flippant remark of one who dabbles in sociology or the profound utterance of a new seer.
Mr. Seligmann, nevertheless, does not hesitate either to make this assertion or to attempt to demonstrate its truth. In "the conversational tone of the scientist," he cites the testimony of anthropologists, the opinions of students of racial and sociological questions, the conclusions reached by scientific surveys of rural and urban conditions, the observations of sworn eye-witnesses and the findings of grand juries in cases of inter-racial disturbance. The conclusion to be reached, to his mind, is that the so-called race problem is not a problem in itself, but a "blind spot" in the eye of the American public, a "color psychosis," a "habit of thought" by which questions of race and racial differences are connected, "frequently deliberately," with phases of American life with which they should have nothing to do,—in fact, with every phase of American life. This habit of thought, Mr. Seligmann says, is prevalent throughout the southern part of this country and is spreading through the North and West. In the cities, it makes the smallest and most natural examples of race tension "definitely subject to manipulation by political leaders and their allies in newspaper offices," raises the rent to Negro applicants for houses, protests against their living in certain localities, opposes the Negro in industry as he awakens to the strategic position which he occupies and uses such opposition in the fostering of race riots. In the rural communities of some parts of the South, it has created an "American Congo" in which peonage is practiced openly. In the World War, it made the United States' "essential struggle" internal rather than external, brought about the rebirth of the Ku-Klux Klan on this side of the waters, and worked against the success of the Nation's arms abroad. In social questions it makes sex "the distorted glass by which the Negro is presented to view." It "lays its fetters upon science" and stifles the truths of anthropology with a blanket of myth. The spread of the habit of thought is in many cases part of a deliberate propaganda, the chief agent of which is the American newspaper, and "the only course for white Americans to pursue is to cultivate thorough-going skepticism as to everything which American newspapers publish about the Negro."
Such are the conditions. Meanwhile, Mr. Seligmann continues, a "new Negro" has been rising. His growth was not started by the War, as some think, but accelerated by it, for it was inevitable that he should come into being. He ranges, in type, from the radical editors of The Messenger to the "new bourgeoisie" which has learned to fight back and die, if need be, for the sake of principle and justice. This is the type of Negro who, in spite of differences of opinion within the race itself, is gradually working his way toward leadership; and this is the Negro who now "faces America." "Newly emancipated from reliance upon any white savior, [he] stands ready to make his unique contribution to what may some time become American civilization."
What is to be his future? It is Mr. Seligmann's opinion and conclusion that his future lies largely with the forces of labor, among whom "color and the habits of thought which come from emphasizing color distinctions must be subordinated to the need for joint consideration of common difficulties." "It depends largely," too, "upon the emancipation of the American people from their newspapers" and upon whether or not they will demand and obtain "systematic information on matters concerning colored people and their relation to white people"; for a knowledge of the truth will set the nation free from the "color psychosis" under which it now labors.
That such a book as this should have been written is in itself an indication, let us hope, of the coming of the new day in racial relations toward which Mr. Seligmann points the way.
D. A. Lane, Jr.