I have just adverted to the fact that the yellow race and the black are not easily assimilated with the white race. It may be well that it is so. To the normal white man amalgamation with these races is almost unthinkable. Nevertheless, there are a few misguided individuals who surely have either a mental or a moral twist who persist in joining together that which nature has put asunder.
A few years ago, a minister sent the following telegram to the Governor of California:[145:1]
“I have just married a Japanese to an American and have done more for God and Uncle Sam than the alien land bill will do in 1000 years.”
It is not the ungodly that cause the suffering in the world so much as the bigoted if well-intentioned fools. Self-elected good people can usually be counted on to cause a lot of mischief. If those who set themselves up as leaders and ethical teachers would but first make sure that they were possessed of at least a fair amount of common sense!
In a recent Methodist Conference at Roanoke, Virginia, the statement was made that the records of some churches in Massachusetts show that in the previous year “17 per cent of the marriages were those in which Negro men married white women or white men married Negro women.”[145:2] This is the more remarkable when account is taken of the very small Negro population of that State.
It is even sometimes asserted that the Negro would bring to the white race some qualities which would tend toward the development of a more perfect man. But such an idea has no basis in fact. The following quotation is to the point:
“We have ample experience to go upon in South America, in the West Indies, in the Southern States themselves. The mulatto exists and has existed for generations, not in hundreds or thousands, but in millions; in what respect has he proved himself the superior of the pure Spaniard, or Portuguese, or Anglo-Saxon? Does South American history bear testimony to his political competence? Have his achievements in science, in literature, in music, been superior to the un-Africanized peoples? Or waiving the question of superiority, has he ever in these domains, produced meritorious work in any fair proportion to his numbers? I do not say that it is impossible to make out a sort of case for him, by the ransacking of records and the employment of a very indefinite standard of values. But I do most emphatically say that no conspicuous or undeniable advantage has resulted from the blending of bloods, such as can or ought to counteract the instinctive repugnance of the South.”[146:3]
It is said that an investigation of 2200 Negro authors showed that nearly all of them come from the mixed stock.[146:4] How many of these would take
first, second, or even third rank in the literary world? It is needless to answer. Indeed, Negroes and mulattoes have been toilers in the United States for generations but who ever heard of an important labor saving instrument invented by them? The same abilities or characteristics which would make a white man only locally important would make a Negro or a mulatto famous. There were thousands upon thousands of white men intellectually and otherwise superior to Booker T. Washington who gained but little recognition, but because he was a negro, or rather mulatto, Washington’s abilities stood out in striking relief. Mulattoes ought to furnish the leaders of the Negro race for the best white blood runs in the veins of some of them. Although mulattoes may furnish the Negro leaders, there can be no doubt that they also furnish far beyond their share of the vicious and the criminal elements of the race as well.