The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn

by William Benjamin Smith

But the question still remains: Why does the South, if she be right in this matter, find the virtue and intelligence of the world arrayed against her? We answer, the overmass of adverse authority is indeed immense, but it is weightless. The testimony of the North and of Europe is hardly more relevant than would be that of the Martians. For in neither has the race question yet presented itself as a serious practical matter; for them the Black Peril has no existence. Hence their treatment of the subject is merely academic and sentimental. They have generous ethical ideas, respectable but well-worn and overworked maxims, high humanitarian principles; and these they ride horseback. For them the Negro is a black swan, a curious and interesting specimen in natural history; and they have no hesitance in extending their sympathy, their hospitality, and their coöperation. They remember that God "hath made of one (blood) all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth," but forget that the author of this noble sentiment was not an ethnologist; they pity "the nation's ward" as the victim of centuries of oppression, and to the eyes of their faith the mount of his transfiguration gleams close at hand. But the practical problem never confronts them in its unrelieved difficulties and dangers. The possibility of blood contamination is not suggested to them, or at least it never comes home to them; and they yield freely to their philanthropic impulses, not thinking whither these would lead them, not seeing the end from the beginning. Southern hearts are not less benevolent than Northern, but Southern eyes are of necessity in this matter wide open, while most others are shut.

But once let Northern and European eyes catch a clear glimpse of the actual peril of the situation; once let the problem step forth before them in a definite concrete form and call for immediate solution; once let the sharp question pierce the national heart, "Shall I or shall I not blend my Caucasian, world-ruling, world-conquering blood with the servile strain of Africa?" and can there be any doubt of the answer? The race instinct is now slumbering in the North and Europe, and not strangely, for there is nothing to keep it awake; but it is not extinct, it exists and is ready to spring up on occasion into fierce and resistless activity. Of this fact our treatment of the Chinese has already furnished a striking illustration. We tolerated and even petted these industrious Orientals—certainly greatly the Negro's superior—so long as they were few in number and in no way embarrassing. But at the first suggestion that they might come in droves and derange our labour system or alter the type of our civilization, there burst forth all over the North a vehement protest, "in might as a flame of fire," that swept everything before it and hurled back the Chinaman into the ocean and barred our ports unyieldingly against him. The case against Chinese immigration was not one-hundredth so strong as against the social equality of the Negro; in fact, there was much to be said against our restrictive legislation, and much was said both ably and eloquently. But the strongest arguments could not make themselves heard; the race instinct, that instinct preservative of all instincts, was infinitely stronger, and easily triumphed. Let us not forget, either, the recent incidents at Northwestern University and elsewhere, which show clearly that the "prejudice," if you please so to call it, against the Negro is hardly less strong, when aroused, even now in Chicago than in New Orleans.

But some one may say, if all this be true, if the race instinct of the Anglo-Saxon is really so mighty and imperious, then there is no danger that it will not assert itself, if need be; and why all this pother about it? We answer, there is really no danger while the instinct is aroused, and therefore, but only therefore, the South is safe. What we deprecate is the systematic warfare that is waged in some quarters against this instinct as a mere unenlightened "prejudice" whereof we should be ashamed—the attempt to battle it down or else to drug it to sleep in the name of morality or religion or higher humanity. When our Northern brothers, by precept and by example, throw the whole weight of their immense authority in favour of a practice that would be ruinous to the South, are they walking according to love?

We do not deny that there may be cases that move our sympathy; that appeal strongly to our sense of fair play, of right between man and man. In and of itself, it may sound strange and unjust and even foolish to deny to Booker Washington a seat at the table of a white man, even should he be distinctly Mr. Washington's inferior. But the matter must not be decided in and of itself—no man either lives for himself or dies for himself. It must be judged in its larger bearings, by its universal interests, where it lays hold upon the ages, under the aspect of eternity. We refuse to let the case rest in the low and narrow category of Duty to the Individual; we range it where it belongs, in the higher and broader category of Obligation to the Race.

And this conducts us to a final remark. Even at the risk of a sus Minervam we venture to correct a great journal, The Outlook, in one of its statements. It assures its readers that the recent criticism does not represent the real South of intelligence, generosity, and true breeding, but is a survival in a few persons, who have not had opportunities of large contact with the world—of an antiquated and incomprehensible prejudice. Such words are doubtless well-meant; but they are ill-meaning, and if we understand them at all, they invert the facts of the case. We have some acquaintance with some of the best elements of the Southern society, some of the best representatives in nearly all the walks of Southern life. We believe the virtue and intelligence of "the real South" are eminently conservative, earnestly deprecate intemperance in language, and are sworn enemies to sectional animosity. Perhaps, in their zeal to cultivate the friendliest relations with their Northern brethren, they may guard their expressions too carefully and repress their true feelings. But he who supposes that the South will ever waver a hair's breadth from her position of uncompromising hostility to any and every form of social equality between the races, deceives himself only less than that other who mistakes her race instinct, the palladium of her future, for an ignorant prejudice and who fails to perceive that her resolution to maintain White racial supremacy within her borders is deepest-rooted and most immutable precisely where her civic virtue, her intelligence, and her refinement are at their highest and best.

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CHAPTER TWO

IS THE NEGRO INFERIOR?

All flesh is not the same flesh;

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