The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn

by William Benjamin Smith

Does some one reply that some Negroes are better than some Whites, physically, mentally, morally? We do not deny it; but this fact, again, is without pertinence. It may very well be that some dogs are superior to some men. It is absurd to suppose that only the elect of the Blacks would unite with only the non-elect of the Whites. Once started, the pammixia would spread through all classes of society and contaminate possibly or actually all. Even a little leaven may leaven the whole lump.

Far more than this, however, even if only very superior Negroes formed unions with non-superior Whites, the case would not be altered; for it is a grievous error to suppose that the child is born of its proximate parents only; it is born of all its ancestry; it is the child of its race. The eternal past lays hand upon it and upon all its descendants. However weak the White, behind him stands Europe; however strong the Black, behind him lies Africa.

Preposterous, indeed, is this doctrine that personal excellence is the true standard, and that only such Negroes as attain a certain grade of merit should or would be admitted to social equality. A favourite evasion! The Independent, The Nation, The Outlook, the whole North—all point admiringly to Mr. Washington, and exclaim: "But only see what a noble man he is—so much better than his would-be superiors!" So, too, a distinguished clergyman, when asked whether he would let his daughter marry a Negro, replied: "We wish our daughters to marry Christian gentlemen." Let, then, the major premise be, "All Christian gentlemen are to be admitted to social equality;" and add, if you will, any desired degree of refinement or education or intellectual prowess as a condition. Does not every one see that any such test would be wholly impracticable and nugatory? If Mr. Washington be the social equal of Roosevelt and Eliot and Hadley, how many others will be the social equals of the next circle, and the next, and the next, in the long descent from the White House and Harvard to the miner and the rag-picker? And shall we trust the hot, unreasoning blood of youth to lay virtues and qualities so evenly in the balance and decide just when some "olive-coloured suitor" is enough a "Christian gentleman" to claim the hand of some simple-hearted milk-maid or some school-ma'am "past her bloom"? The notion is too ridiculous for refutation. If the best Negro in the land is the social equal of the best Caucasian, then it will be hard to prove that the lowest White is higher than the lowest Black; the principle of division is lost, and complete social equality is established. We seem to have read somewhere that, when the two ends of one straight segment coincide with the two ends of another, the segments coincide throughout their whole extent.

But even suppose that only the lower strata of Whites mingle with the upper strata of Negroes, the result would be more slowly, but not the less surely, fatal. The interpenetration in our democratic society is too thorough. Here and there the Four Hundred may isolate themselves, but only for a time and imperfectly. Who knows when the scion of a millionaire may turn into a motorman, or the son of a peasant hew his way to the Capitol? Let the mongrel poison assail the humbler walks of life, and it will spread like a bubonic plague through the higher. The standing of the South would be lost irretrievably. Though her blood might still flow pure in myriad veins, yet who could prove it? The world would turn away from her, and point back the finger of suspicion, and whisper "Unclean!"

Just here we must insist that the South, in this tremendous battle for the race, is fighting not for herself only, but for her sister North as well. It is a great mistake to imagine that one can be smutched and the other remain immaculate. Up from the Gulf regions the foul contagion would let fly its germs beyond the lakes and mountains. The floods of life mingle their waters over all our land. Generations might pass before the darkening tinge could be seen distinctly above the Ohio, but it would be only a question of time. The South alone would suffer total eclipse, but the dread penumbra would deepen insensibly over all the continent.

Well, then, the determination and attitude of the South are just and holy and good, and we may now advance to another question. Granted the completest social separation in the South, where the danger is instant and fearful, is it also right or demanded in the North, where the danger is distant or wholly unreal? Why not social separation and the race standard in the South, but social equality and the standard of personal merit in the North? We apprehend that such will be the position of many fair-minded men at the North, and perhaps we may hope for no greater concession. Such a compromise, if carried out to the letter and its purpose and spirit everywhere boldly proclaimed and distinctly understood, might indeed be accepted as a modus vivendi. If the Northern Press and Pulpit should speak on this wise: "You Southerners mistake us entirely. We recoil with your own horror from the idea of a hybridized Dixie; God forbid that you should 'herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains'! We too eschew the notion of race equality. We do not practise, we do not preach it. We applaud your inflexible resolution to keep the Caucasian blood uncorrupt and consecrated to the highest ideals of humanity. Only, we would generously remember high achievements and reward exceptional merit with recognition, but always without will or desire to disturb your social order or to debase the coin of your White civilization. We hold out no false hopes, we encourage no vain ambitions, we flatter no absurd conceits, we sow no seeds of discontent or discord." If such notes rang out from the moulders and wielders of the Northern mind, the South would rejoice with joy unspeakable. She might then pass by unnoticed what now excites her protest. But alas! such notes are rarely, if ever, heard. Instead, it is constantly reiterated that the South is the victim of "unreasoning prejudice," that she is old-fogy, antiquated, ignorant, and without liberalizing experience of the larger world. Her plea for race integrity is thrust aside as not worth hearing or is answered at best with fine scorn and lofty contempt. From such Northern utterances it seems impossible to draw any conclusion but that very many would be quite willing to see perfect equality of the races established in the South, even with its inevitable corollary of mongrelization. [ [3] ] It is this painful consciousness, that the central dogma of her civilization finds apparently so little favour beyond the Potomac, that so alarms the South and makes her so supersensitive as to Northern practice. Examples, otherwise trifling, acquire deep interest when set to illustrate some vital principle.

To the North, so superior in all the tokens of development, the world looks for the pattern. Her conduct counts as the model. The Negroes themselves cannot be expected to distinguish between the Northerner North and the Northerner South, nor to reflect that the wise man howls with the wolves, and very naturally feel themselves the victims of gross injustice.

And herein lies the profound and disastrous significance of the Washington incident and its fellows. They are open proclamations from the housetops of society that the South is radically wrong, that no racial distinctions are valid in social life, that only personal qualities are to be regarded. The necessary inference is the perfect social equality of the races, as races, the abolition of the colour line in society, in the family, in the home. The unescapable result would be the mongrelization of the South and her reduction below the level of Mexico and Central America. [ [4] ]

Our opponents, however, are not yet left without rejoinder. They will and do affirm that all such incidents are only trivial, that the noisy protest of the South is a mere "tempest in a teapot." In a certain sense this is true. The precedent at the White House has found and will find no acceptance in the Southland. Not one door of equality will be loosened in its closure, but the bolts will be fastened firmer, the gates will be guarded more narrowly. However, it is equally true that the South could not overlook such an incident in such a quarter. The treasure she has to keep is beyond rubies; the watchmen on her towers must neither slumber nor sleep. She is safe, but only because of, and not in default of, unresting vigilance.

We congratulate our friends in the North that they can play with fire without fear of burns; that they can wine and dine amiable and interesting Negroes as rare birds of passage, with no thought of ulterior consequences—at least, to themselves. Their wealth, their power, their culture, their grandeur, but more than all else, their excessive preponderance in numbers, preclude the thought that in many generations their blood could be perceptibly tinged with tides from Africa. With us of the South, alas! the whole situation is quite another. They may safely smile at such an incident as an empty scabbard; but to us it is a drawn dagger.