He has simply been imitating, as best he could, the dress, the talk, the manners, the methods, the work of the whites.
The Latin whites originated a civilization; the negroes are copying one. Is there no difference between the higher genius which conceives and the lower talent which copies?
It required the genius of Raphael to conceive and paint “The Transfiguration.” Any ordinary artist can make a fair copy of it. But does anyone compare the copyist with the original artist? It required the genius of Sangallo and Michelangelo to rear St. Peter’s at Rome: any well-educated architect of today might rear its duplicate. But would that make the modern architect equal to the two Italian masters?
Ten thousand negro men and women may be able to sit down at the piano and render Verdi’s “Il Trovatore,” but does that entitle the negroes to class themselves with the Italian composer?
My thought is this—the negro, assisted in every possible way by the whites, is copying the ways and learning the arts of the white man; but the fact that he can learn to read the white man’s book does not make him the equal of the white race which produced the book. The fact that he may learn from us how to practice law or medicine does not make him equal to the white race which created the code of laws and the science of medicine. It may have required a thousand years for us to learn that which we can teach him in one year, but the point is that the negro, in his native home, had just as much time and opportunity to evolve a civilization as we had, and he did not do it.
Let me repeat to you, Doctor, the unvarnished truth—for it may do you good:
The advance made by your race in America is the reflection of the white man’s civilization. Just that and nothing more. The negro lives in the light of the white man’s civilization and reflects a part of that light.
He imitates an example kept before his eyes; copies models never out of his sight; echoes the words the white man utters; patterns after the manners and the methods of the whites around him, and thus reflects our civilization.
He has originated nothing, and if the copy, the pattern, the example were taken away he would fall back as he did in Haiti.