The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn

by William Benjamin Smith

"Evidently, on account of the different method of introduction of culture. While the Mohammedans influence the people in the same manner in which the ancients civilized the tribes of Europe, the whites send only the products of their manufactures and a few of their representatives into the negro country. A real amalgamation between the higher types of the whites and the negroes has never taken place. The amalgamation of the negroes by the Mohammedans is facilitated particularly by the institution of polygamy, the conquerors taking native wives and raising their children as members of their own family."

Such is the programme for "influencing" the Negro! Such is the way to introduce "culture," whereby, in a thousand years, the "mixed race" may "nearly" attain the present Caucasian standard! That is, the only successful "method of introduction of culture" is to introduce blood, to introduce a new stock, a new germinal principle. Then comes a race of mongrels, of average mental powers higher than the lower breed, with exceptions little lower than the higher. Since the forms of civilization are easily imposed on inferior breeds, the resulting mongrels do what one may be pleased to call "nearly attaining" to the standard of the higher. Bear witness the West Indies, and Mexico, and Central and South America. What interest has any one in contesting such statements? To our mind they give away the case entirely; out of their own mouths such speakers are unappealably condemned. Bornu [ [23] ] and Haiti may have attractions for some; but for us, none whatever.

"When, finally, we consider the inferior position held by the negro race of the United States, who are in the closest contact with modern civilization, we must not forget that the old race-feeling of the inferiority of the colored race is as potent as ever and is a formidable obstacle to its advance and progress, notwithstanding that schools and universities are open to them. We might rather wonder how much has been accomplished in a short period against heavy odds. It is hardly possible to say what would become of the negro if he were able to live with the whites on absolutely equal terms" (p. 307).

Such is the pathetic plea for the absolute equality in our American life of Black and White. We do not deny that there is a certain force in such words. To us the Negro seems handicapped with an undeniable inferiority, which, particularly in the commercial world, accumulates rapidly against him, as it were, at compound interest. And this is the seventh seal of his doom. But in science, in literature, in art, he receives all encouragement; his work is at an absurd premium. Take one illustration, instar omnium. In the advertisement of "Volumes by Paul Lawrence Dunbar," in "The Uncalled," his own publishers speak thus: "A poet who starts out by being handicapped by excessive praise suffers from it for a long time.... Just because he [Dunbar] happened to be a Negro, a vast amount of adulation was heaped upon him." Precisely the opposite of the picture drawn above! Compare, also, the history of the Negroes of Chatham, Ontario, and of other such early colonies. That they no longer meet with such extraordinary favour in the North is largely due to the fact that they have uniformly, when in numbers, sadly disappointed the hopes of their benefactors and well-wishers. It seems plain, moreover, that a really strong and highly endowed blood would triumph with equal ease over excessive favour and over unjust disfavour. Would any such discrimination keep down the Anglo-Saxon? Would he not "make by force his merit known"? And have twenty centuries of race prejudice and outrageous persecution availed to repress or depress the all-victorious sons of Israel? The generous explanation just offered must be rejected as utterly inadequate.

Hence it is concluded (p. 307) that "no great weight can be attributed to the earlier rise of civilization in the Old World which is satisfactorily explained as a chance. In short, historical events appear to have been much more potent in leading races to civilization than their faculty, and it follows that achievements of races do not warrant us to assume that one race is more highly gifted than the other."

We submit that there has not been offered, for these conclusions, any semblance of proof whatever. Let our readers judge;—we have quoted very fully. Notice, moreover, the phrase "earlier rise of civilization in the Old World." But who knows that it rose earlier in the Old World? Or who cares? Who argues therefrom? The point is, that it rose higher, immeasurably higher, in the Old World; but this, the kernel, is not mentioned. All this was mere "chance"! Yes, perhaps; in the same sense that the higher rise of the Himalayas than of the Andes was mere "chance"; that the richer fauna and flora of the Old World were mere "chance"; that the greater energy and stature and cranial capacity of the Aryan were mere "chance"; in the same sense that everything in Euclidean space is a mere "chance". In order to justify any assertion, it will suffice to enlarge sufficiently the meaning of your terms. But we do not think that the cause of truth is prospered by such methods.

Some one may ask, however, is there not some grain of correctness in this contention that capacity cannot always be measured by achievement? We grant it cheerfully, and we applaud our opponent and his school for calling this connection in question, and bidding the current assumption answer for itself. We, too, would "test all things," but we would also "hold fast the good." The savant has been unscientific in his procedure; he has gone too far; he has thrown out the baby with the bath. He has neglected the central principles of the doctrine of probability. If there be two members of two families, and one succeeds greatly in life, along this path and that, while the other fails here, there, everywhere, we are strongly tempted to ascribe higher faculty to the one than to the other. Yet we may very well be wrong. The latter might put up a plausible defence. He might reason as this school has done. He might say that the game was called too soon, that various circumstances continually favoured his rival, that in a perfectly fair field he would have shown himself at least equal. All, then, that we could say would be, that the Inverse Probability was somewhat against him. His failure is a fact: it may have been due to lower faculty, it may have been due to something else; but it stands against him, and it raises a certain probability of inferiority. No such failure stands against the other. No such probability of inferior faculty is suggested, though it remains barely possible that he was really inferior.

But now, suppose there are a million or a trillion in each of the two families; and of these the one trillion attain varying but splendid success along every line of endeavour, while the other trillion fail, more or less completely, along the same lines. What, then, shall we say? What, then, must we say? Unhesitatingly, that there must have been a very decided difference of average faculty. While we might admit the measurable possibility that chance and time and circumstance played a conspicuous and even a determining part in the fortunes of the one pair, yet we could by no means admit the like for any great number of pairs; and when the number of pairs becomes enormously great, the possibility in question becomes vanishingly small—too small to be dealt with in any system of our thought. Here is the given effect: success of the one class, failure of the other. What the cause? Is it mainly, at least, an (average) uniform difference of faculty? This cause is simple and intelligible and self-repeating; if it worked in one case, it would work in all cases and explain everything as easily as any one thing. But the other cause, the conspiracy of chance and time and circumstance, is not self-repeating, and however great the likelihood of a single such chance combination, the likelihood of innumerable such repetitions is inexpressibly small—on the same principle that the chance of throwing heads once is one-half, but the chance of throwing them consecutively twice is only one-fourth, and thrice is only one-eighth, and so on. We need not parade here the mathematical formulæ for the reckoning of the so-called inverse probability of each of these two hypotheses. Common sense tells us at once that the difference of faculty is practically certain, the chance-effect or coincidence-effect is practically impossible.

Now, such is the case really presented. On the one side, the generations of generations of Caucasians; all have distinguished themselves by high and varied achievements along every line of activity yet opened up to man. On the other hand, the primitives—the backward races of Australia, particularly of Africa; they seem scarcely yet quite conscious. Not one has done anything historical. The failure is complete and universal. That this uniform and immense diversity is a mere accident, the age-long result of a fortuitous concourse of circumstances, or ascriptible to any such trivialities as those enumerated, is almost incalculably improbable, except we expand the term accident to include the laws of gravitation and the conservation of energy. We might as well say that the different behaviours of two bodies of oxygen and hydrogen were to be "explained as a chance," and did not argue any greater mass in the average molecule of the former.

This conclusion would hold, even if the higher faculty of the Caucasian were antecedently extremely improbable; the a priori unlikelihood would become a posteriori, in view of the facts of history, a practical certainty. However, the case is immeasurably stronger. For a difference in faculty, not merely in kind, but also in degree of faculty, is not only not improbable a priori—it is probable almost to certainty. All nature around us is one endless spectacle of such diversities. Equality is absolutely unknown. This observation is altogether too trite to dwell on. Will any one deny that the degrees of faculty are often inexpressibly apart in members of the same family? Did any amount of opportunity serve to raise any other member of the Bonaparte family quite to the level of the first Napoleon? If, then, such inherent disparities in individuals be undeniable, is parity among tribes or races to be expected? Is it not, in fact, antecedently incredible? To us it seems no more unlikely that one race should be superior to another than that one man should be taller, or one mountain range higher, or one ocean deeper, than another. The question of equality or inequality between two races of men is a mere question of present facts, to be settled without any bias, now and here, precisely as you would settle the like question between the Numidian lion and the Colorado cougar. And when some one pleads for the backward "primitives" that they need only a little more time, a few millenniums, we answer once more: Very possibly; but time may be all that the jaguar needs to surpass the tiger, or the ant to rival the eagle.