The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn

by William Benjamin Smith

It may be too much to affirm that in all extra-social matters—in politics, in business, in literature, in science, in art, everywhere but in society—even the best sentiment or practice of the South is eager to give the Negro strict justice, or ample scope, or free opportunity. Southerners are merely human; and there is, perhaps, no great historical example of an inferior race or class treated with all proper consideration by the superior. Certainly our Northern friends will hardly maintain that recent disclosures clearly show that their ruling corporate powers are humane, or generous, or even barely just towards the poor and humble, in their administration of the important industrial trusts which God has so wisely placed in their hands. They are giants, and it is the nature of giants to press hard. At this point, then, the South is or should be open to conviction. It is the part of statesmanship, as well as of humanity, continuously to adjust the relations of classes—much more so of races—so that the largest interests involved may be sacredly conserved and at the least possible sacrifice of any smaller interest that may conflict. More can hardly be expected in a world whose law is strife. Tried by this standard, it is very doubtful whether the South falls even one notch below the average set everywhere by the example of the ruling class. If she does, then let her bear the blame, with neither excuse nor extenuation for her shortcomings. But in the matter of social separation we can and we will make no concessions whatever. Neither dare we tolerate any violations of our fundamental principle among ourselves; nor dare we sit calmly by and behold its violation by others, when that violation imperils our own supreme interests and renders more difficult the maintenance of our own position. Here, then, is laid bare the nerve of the whole matter: Is the South justified in this absolute denial of social equality to the Negro, no matter what his virtues or abilities or accomplishments?

We affirm, then, that the South is entirely right in thus keeping open at all times, at all hazards, and at all sacrifices an impassable social chasm between Black and White. This she must do in behalf of her blood, her essence, of the stock of her Caucasian Race. To the writer the correctness of this thesis seems as clear as the sun—so evident as almost to forestall argument; nor can he quite comprehend the frame of mind that can seriously dispute it. But let us look at it closely. Is there any doubt whatever as to the alternative? If we sit with Negroes at our tables, if we entertain them as our guests and social equals, if we disregard the colour line in all other relations, is it possible to maintain it fixedly in the sexual relation, in the marriage of our sons and daughters, in the propagation of our species? Unquestionably, No! It is certain as the rising of tomorrow's sun, that, once the middle wall of social partition broken down, the mingling of the tides of life would begin instantly and proceed steadily. Of course, it would be gradual, but none the less sure, none the less irresistible. It would make itself felt at first most strongly in the lower strata of the white population; but it would soon invade the middle and menace insidiously the very uppermost. Many bright Mulattoes would ambitiously woo, and not a few would win, well-bred women disappointed in love or goaded by impulse or weary of the stern struggle for existence. As a race, the Southern Caucasian would be irreversibly doomed. For no possible check could be given to this process once established. Remove the barrier between two streams flowing side by side—immediately they begin to mingle their molecules; in vain you attempt to replace it. Not even ten legions of Clerk Maxwell's demons could ever sift them out and restore the streams to their original purity. The moment the bar of absolute separation is thrown down in the South, that moment the bloom of her spirit is blighted forever, the promise of her destiny is annulled, the proud fabric of her future slips into dust and ashes. No other conceivable disaster that might befall the South could, for an instant, compare with such miscegenation within her borders. Flood and fire, fever and famine and the sword—even ignorance, indolence, and carpet-baggery—she may endure and conquer while her blood remains pure; but once taint the well-spring of her life, and all is lost—even honour itself. It is this immediate jewel of her soul that the South watches with such a dragon eye, that she guards with more than vestal vigilance, with a circle of perpetual fire. The blood thereof is the life thereof; he who would defile it would stab her in her heart of heart, and she springs to repulse him with the fiercest instinct of self-preservation. It may not be that she is distinctly conscious of the immeasurable interests at stake or of the real grounds of her roused antagonism; but the instinct itself is none the less just and true and the natural bulwark of her life.

To set forth great things by small, we may take the instinct of the family, with its imperious and uncompromising demand for absolute female chastity. It is not here, in any controlling measure, a question of individual morality. We make no such absolute demand upon men. We regret, we condemn, we may infinitely deplore sexual irregularity in son, or brother, or husband, or father, or friend, but we do not ostracize;—we may forgive, we may honour, we may even glorify the offender in spite of his offense. But for the female dissolute there is no forgiveness, however we may extra-socially pity or even admire. A double standard—an abomination! But while none may approve, yet every one admits and applies it—for reasons deeper than our conscious logic, and irresistible. For the offense of the man is individual and limited, while that of the woman is general, and strikes mortally at the existence of the family itself.

Now the idea of the race is far more sacred than that of the family. It is, in fact, the most sacred thing on earth; and he who offends against it is an apostate from his kind and mounts the apex of sacrilege.

At this point we hear some one exclaim, "Not so fast! To sit at table, to mingle freely in society with certain persons, does not imply you would marry them." Certainly not, in every case. We may recognize socially those whom we personally abhor. This matters not, however; for wherever social commingling is admitted, there the possibility of intermarriage must be also admitted. It becomes a mere question of personal preference, of like and dislike. Now, there is no accounting for tastes. It is ridiculous to suppose that no Negroes would prove attractive to any whites. The possible would become actual—as certainly as you will throw double-double sixes, if only you keep on throwing. To be sure, where the number of Negroes is almost vanishingly small, as in the North and in Europe, there the chances of such mésalliances are proportionally divided; some may even count them negligible. But in the South, where in many districts the Black outnumbers the White, they would be multiplied immensely, and crosses would follow with increasing frequency.

It is only the sense of blood superiority, the pride of race, that has hitherto protected the white labourer. Break this down or abate it, and he sinks swiftly to the level of the mongrel. Laugh as you will at the haughtiness of the ignorant Southerner, at his scorn of the Negro, perhaps his superior, it is this very race self-respect that is the rock of his salvation. As Bernhard Moses points out, it was because the Anglo-Saxon so cherished this feeling that he refused to amalgamate with the Indians—a proud and in some ways superior race—but drove them relentlessly, and often, it may be, unrighteously before him into the sea. It was just because the Spaniard, though otherwise proud enough, did not cherish this feeling, that he did amalgamate with the victims of his greed and descend into hopeless depths of hybridization. So far, then, from doing aught to weaken this sentiment, we should do our utmost to strengthen it; we should studiously avoid offending it. But social equality must deadly wound it and hence drag miscegenation and all South America in its train.

But some may deny that the mongrelization of the Southern people would offend the race notion—would corrupt or degrade the Southern stock of humanity. If so, then such a one has yet to learn the largest-writ lessons of history and the most impressive doctrines of biological science. That the Negro is markedly inferior to the Caucasian is proved both craniologically and by six thousand years of planet-wide experimentation; and that the commingling of inferior with superior must lower the higher is just as certain as that the half-sum of two and six is only four. [ [1] ]

If accepted science teaches anything at all, it teaches that the heights of being in civilized man have been reached along one path and one only—the path of Selection, of the preservation of favoured individuals and of favoured races. The deadly enemy of the whole process of uplifting, of the Drang nach oben, of the course of history itself, is pammixia. Only give it play, and it would inevitably level all life into one undistinguished heap. Now, amalgamation of Black and White is only a special case of pammixia. The hope of the human lies in the superhuman; and the possibility of the superhuman is given in selection, in natural and rational selection, among the children that are to be, of the parents of the men to come. The notion of social racial equality is thus seen to be abhorrent alike to instinct and to reason; for it flies in the face of the process of the suns, it runs counter to the methods of the mind of God.

It is idle to talk of education and civilization and the like as corrective or compensative agencies. [ [2] ] All are weak and beggarly as over against the almightiness of heredity, the omniprepotence of the transmitted germ-plasma. Let this be amerced of its ancient rights, let it be shorn in some measure of its exceeding weight of ancestral glory, let it be soiled in its millennial purity and integrity, and nothing shall ever restore it; neither wealth, nor culture, nor science, nor art, nor morality, nor religion—not even Christianity itself. Here and there these may redeem some happy spontaneous variation, some lucky freak of nature; but nothing more—they can never redeem the race. If this be not true, then history and biology are alike false; then Darwin and Spencer, Hæckel and Weismann, Mendel and Pearson, have lived and laboured in vain.

Equally futile is the reply, so often made by our opponents, that miscegenation has already progressed far in the Southland, as witness millions of Mulattoes. Certainly; but do not such objectors know in their hearts that their reply is no answer, but is utterly irrelevant? We admit and deplore the fact that unchastity has poured a broad stream of white blood into black veins; but we deny, and perhaps no one will affirm, that it has poured even the slenderest appreciable rill of Negro blood into the veins of the Whites. We have no excuse whatever to make for these masculine incontinences; we abhor them as disgraceful and almost bestial. But, however degrading and even unnatural, they in nowise, not even in the slightest conceivable degree, defile the Southern Caucasian blood. That blood to-day is absolutely pure; and it is the inflexible resolution of the South to preserve that purity, no matter how dear the cost. We repeat, then, it is not a question of individual morality, nor even of self-respect. He who commerces with a negress debases himself and dishonours his body, the temple of the Spirit; but he does not impair, in anywise, the dignity or integrity of his race; he may sin against himself and others, and even against his God, but not against the germ-plasma of his kind.