The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn

by William Benjamin Smith

But it is the sheerest folly to expect of education the impossible—to dream that it can affect the blood, or transmute racial qualities, or smooth down the inequalities between individuals of the same breed, much less between the breeds themselves. Why, if education could lift the Negro to the Caucasian level, to what, pray, in the meantime would it lift the Caucasian himself? We repeat, and the repetition cannot be made too emphatic, there is no hope whatever of any organic improvement, of any race betterment of the Negro, from any or from all extra-organic agencies of education or religion or civilization. Let us, then, educate the negro, to make him a more useful and productive, a law-abiding and happier member of the community; but let us not hope too much from this education, if we would not be bitterly disappointed.

Immediately after the Civil War, in the halcyon days of reconstruction, the higher education was administered copiously to the Negro, in the honest belief that it was the catholicon for his ills; and universities for the Coloured man sprang up thick about us. Here, in New Orleans, there are at least three. A sadder and at the same time a more ludicrous sight we have never beheld than on the occasion of a call upon the President of one of these soi-disant universities. We waited in the ante-room for the dismissal of his class in psychology. At last the bell tapped, and half a dozen Mulatto women, the whole class, emerged from the lecture-room of this distinguished scholar, whose name was not unknown in Europe. With a look of infinite despair, which not even his mistaken enthusiasm for humanity could quite chase away, the heavy-hearted lecturer followed and proceeded to conduct us through the building to his own residence. We passed through but one room where class exercises were in progress. An olive-coloured young man was at the board, trying to explain to a Mulatto woman, the only member of the class, the mysterious nature of a perpendicular. He appeared very earnest in his exposition, but unable to awaken any answering intelligence. To us, it seemed that the force of folly could no further go; and our commiseration for the highly cultured theologian, since released from his labours, who had so utterly forgotten the famous prohibition near the close of the Sermon on the Mount, was and remains even to this day painfully intense.

We hear less nowadays of the saving efficacy of Greek, Latin, and the Calculus, [ [27] ] but all the more of the imperative necessity for industrial training—the idea which Mr. Washington has championed so vigorously and to which Mr. Carnegie has lent the sanction of his munificence. Undoubtedly this notion, if not far wiser, is at least far more practicable. While the higher culture at "coloured universities," in the vast majority of cases, merely spoils a plough-hand or house-maid, industrial training, like that given at Tuskegee, may very reasonably be expected to raise sensibly the productive efficiency of the Negro, and to elevate the general standard of his life through the formation of valuable habits of manual dexterity, of accuracy, of conscientiousness, and of thrift—not to mention occasional great gain in scientific equipment, or even some artistic awakening. One cannot deny, then, that Mr. Washington has undertaken a great and beneficent work for his race—one in which some measurable success may reasonably be hoped for.

But our sympathy with such rational and well-directed efforts must not blind us to near-lying limitations, which no might of man can possibly remove. Let it be said, then, boldly that the Negro will not enter generally or in great numbers into the field of skilled labour—neither in the North nor in the South. It is, of course, not unattended with danger to venture into the realm of prophecy, but in this case the bases of prediction seem particularly broad and solid. We all know that skilled labour is daily growing more and more thoroughly organized. Rightly or wrongly, for weal or for woe, it regards capital, especially combined and organized capital, if not as its enemy, at least as its exploiter, prepared at every instant to make the very most of it—to assail it at any and every exposed point, to throttle it by any and every means, and to reduce it to serfdom. As over against the might of accumulated millions, the labourer cannot fail to perceive his utter impotence—he is not even a drop of a bucket. It is only in great numbers, in compact and readily wielded organizations, that the individual workman can count for anything whatever—can find any hope of escape from the veriest servitude. It is idle to suppose that, in many years to come, capital will not continue to mass itself into formidable aggregations, or that labour will cease to array itself in firmer and firmer unions and associations for self-protection and for maintenance or elevation of the standard of life, the minimum of subsistence.

Now, to such federations of labour, to such combinations for the commonweal, involving, as they so often do, the most determined self-renunciation, the most heroic self-sacrifice, even the Caucasian nature is by no means full-grown, and the Negroid is altogether unequal. There is not the slightest probability that the great labour organizations would, in general, think of admitting to their membership an element of such notable weakness as the Negro would certainly be. Such would be the case, even if other considerations were absent. But they are present. As inferiors, accustomed to a lower standard of life and more pliant to the demands of employers, the Negroes would present the same problem and the same menace as the Chinese—only in a more aggravated form. In their admission in large numbers to the ranks of skilled labour, this latter could not fail to see a terrible and instant threat of reduced wages, of lowered life, of baser thraldom. Race prejudice, if you call it so, would blaze out immediately, and with irresistible violence. It makes not the slightest difference whether labour would be right or wrong, justified or unjustified; it would be the instinct of self-preservation fanned suddenly into vehement flame, and nothing could withstand it. As an example in point, take the violent opposition offered a few years ago by the miners of Illinois to the importation of Negro labourers; take the recent practically total expulsion of Negroes, many of them peaceable and unoffending, from various towns, districts, and counties in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, and elsewhere. Consider all this as unreasonable, as outrageous—it matters not; it shows the temper of the American-Caucasian labourer, which will hardly tolerate the competition of his equals, and certainly not of any form of labour lower than his own. And in defence of what he regards as the most important and most sacred of all his rights, he will not hesitate for an instant at the adoption of means. [ [28] ]

Accordingly, we may confidently affirm that the experiment of Mr. Washington and his Northern multi-millionaire admirers, to solve the race problem by making of the Negro a skilled labourer, may indeed be magnificent, but, in any large measure, it cannot succeed. If at any time it seemed to promise any very wide success, it would rouse a race animosity, North and South, the like of which we have not yet beheld.

What fields of employment, then, remain open to the Negroid? We answer: Those he has thus far occupied, where there is no great organized competition of the Whites. The plantation and the countless forms of personal and occasional service are undoubtedly the regions where his abilities may be most naturally and most profitably employed. There, too, his better qualities, his endowments both of mind and of body, find fullest and most useful play. Small farming and retail dealing he may also do successfully; he may teach his kind, he may preach and plead and prescribe and publish for them. Superior artisans will show themselves here and there, and occasionally abilities of still higher order will crop out, especially among Mulattoes. If they will, these can find ample scope for their powers within the ranks of their own people. Spartam tuam exorna will, in all such cases, be the counsel of friendly wisdom. Vain and foolish for even the superior Negroid to try to take the kingdom of heaven by force, to conquer a position among the Whites commensurate with his abilities as a Black. Better a big frog in a small puddle than a small frog in a big puddle. In general, whatever tends towards the sharp demarcation of the two races, towards the accurate delimitation of their spheres of activity and influence, will unquestionably make for peace, for prosperity, for mutual understanding, and for general contentment. On the other hand, every attempt to blur these boundaries, to wipe out natural distinctions, to mix immiscibles, must always issue in confusion, discord, failure, reciprocal injury, and final ruin.

We think that universal history attests the correctness of this observation. Wherever border lines have been closely drawn and distinctly recognized, whether between species or races, nations or tribes, castes, classes, or individuals, there have been found at least comparative quiet, harmony, mutual regard, and even happiness. But ill-defined borders have been everywhere and everywhen the fruitful source of strife, destruction, and misery. It was with a just feeling for this great truth that the profound Gnostic, Basilides, declared that in "the restoration of all things," at "the consummation of the æons," every element would seek its own place and there abide forever, and not as if fishes were trying to pasture with sheep upon the mountains. A kindred sense of the fitness of things is revealed here in the South (and also in the North), where one will often hear it said that "I like a Negro—in his place." This does not mean, at least it need not mean, any harshness or over-haughtiness on the part of the speaker. We have often heard it on the lips of the kindest-hearted, the most humane in their treatment of the Negro. It is a just recognition of a patent, unmistakable, and incontrovertible fact, which no humanity can amend and no sophistry can disguise. The same feeling is frequently met with among sober-minded Blacks, who, much to one's surprise sometimes, are found to resent the ambitious attempts of their fellows, generally Mulattoes, to rise above their own race and align themselves with the Whites. We affirm then that drawing the colour line, firm and fast, between the races, first of all in social relations, and then by degrees in occupations also, is a natural process and a rational procedure, which makes equally for the welfare of both.

That this process will actually go on, though with many interruptions and much opposition, we cannot doubt. The latter will be due in the main to aspiring Mulattoes, to purblind philanthropists, and to designing politicians—all three the real enemies of the Negro and the disturbers of his peace.

In spite of them, however, the process will go on, and we shall see whether the Negro be able to maintain himself in the presence of the Caucasian, though in an inferior place, playing a subordinate rôle, within a protected but contracted sphere of activity. Certainly not a brilliant future that opens before him, at the very best. Even the highest success might seem humble enough, but is it sure that even such a lowly victory awaits him?