The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn

by William Benjamin Smith

What perverse ingenuity! Likeness in appearance was a reason, but likeness in reality—in blood, in brain, in nature, in origin—this was no reason! Penny wise, pound foolish. Now the fact is that the likeness in reality was far stronger than in appearance.

"Therefore the fundamental difficulty for the rise of primitive people, namely, that an individual which has risen to the level of the higher civilization is still looked upon as belonging to an inferior race, did not prevail."

Here again there is quietly assumed everything in dispute. We deny outright that such is "the fundamental difficulty." In a measure it has no existence at all, annulled by the prevalent doctrine of the equality of all men. In wide circles these superior "primitives" (i.e., Negroes) are petted and flattered and extraordinarily favoured. No proof of the assertion in question is so much as hinted.

"Thus it was possible that, in the colonies of ancient times, society could grow by accretion from among the more primitive people. Furthermore, the devastating influences of diseases which nowadays begin to ravage the inhabitants of territories newly opened to the whites were not so strong on account of the permanent contiguity of the people of the Old World who were always in contact with each other and therefore subject to the same influences. The invasion of America and Polynesia, on the other hand, was accompanied by the introduction of new diseases among the natives of these countries. The suffering and devastation wrought by epidemics which followed the discovery are too well known to be described in full."

True, but most inadequate; for why did not the contact with the new peoples affect the invaders as well as the invaded with new diseases? Especially, why did these invaders not yield to the new local or climatic distempers to which the invaded had long since become measurably immune? The near-lying fact that the invaders were stronger, more viable, more resistant to disease, in every way more vigorous—the very fact that made them invaders—this all-important fact has been entirely overlooked.

"In addition to this it may be said that the contrast between the culture represented by the modern white and that of primitive man is far more fundamental than that between the ancients and the people with whom they come in contact. Particularly, the methods of manufacture have developed so enormously that the industries of the primitive peoples of our times are exterminated by the cheapness and large quantity of the products imported by the white trader; because primitive man is unable to compete with the power of production of the machines of the whites, while in olden times the superior hand product rivalled with a hand product of a lower type."

To what uses may not the doctrine of Protection be turned! For a generation we were taught that it was necessary to protect by a high tariff the machine products of the United States against the competition of the hand products of the Old World; now we are told that not only has the competition of the machine products "exterminated" the hand industries, but it has even prevented the "primitive" from learning the new "methods of manufacture" and so becoming civilized and saving himself from extermination! The reader may be safely left to perceive the irrelevance and the emptiness of such "may-be-saids." Let him further reflect that the great bulk of this extermination, begun in America nearly four hundred years ago, was accomplished in three hundred years, before the modern era of machine products. To attribute the disappearance of the Indian to the overthrow of his industries by the competition of cheap calicoes and wooden nutmegs sounds more like jest than earnest. Why, the curiosity of the "invaders" actually supplied and still supplies a new market for the aboriginal wares.

The next remark, "that in several regions, particularly in America and in parts of Siberia, the primitive tribes are swamped by the numbers of the immigrating race," seems hardly worth quoting in full. But from all of this it is concluded (p. 306) "that the conditions for assimilation in ancient Europe were much more favorable" than where modern civilization has overtaken the "primitives," and that therefore there is no "need to assume that the ancient Europeans were more gifted than other races" that disappear before modern civilization. The reader must see that, even if there were granted everything claimed for these reasons, the question as to the fact of European superiority would not be touched.

For corroboration, appeal is made (p. 306) to the Arabs and the Sudanese. In the second half of the eighth century, the Sudan was invaded by "Hamitic tribes" and "Mohammedanism." "Large empires" came and went "in struggles with neighboring states," and "a relatively high degree of culture has been attained." The invaders intermarried with the natives, and the mixed races, some of which are almost purely negro, have risen high above the level of other African negroes." We submit that such "corroboration" is little stronger than weakness itself. "Relatively high culture" is too vague a term to argue with, and a thousand years of such history "of north Africa" is not worth a brief generation of European history. If the infusion of "Hamitic" blood and civilization has appreciably helped the Sudanese, we are not surprised; but who will infer from that fact that these infusers are not superior?

"Why, then, have the Mohammedans been able to civilize these tribes and to raise them to nearly the same standard which they had attained, while the whites have not been capable of influencing the negro in Africa to any considerable extent?" Mark you, the word "nearly"—a bridge broad enough to span the straits of Gibraltar, the chasm between Bagdad or Granada and Dahomey, between Averroës and the Mad Mullah. Some would, perhaps, hold that in the United States the Negro has attained "nearly" to the Caucasian level. But since it was at best only "nearly" and not quite, it follows that the mixture of Hamite and Negro did, after all, work a debasement of the former. And how was this possible, if the latter was not inferior?