Chapter XVI: Part 16

While it would be quite impossible to show that the existence of these miscellaneous educational, industrial, and political opportunities is due to any general desire upon the part of the members of the white majority to minimize the differences between themselves and the Negroes, it is certainly true that this desire exists in a limited section of the white population. At the present time, white friends of the Negro are actively engaged in efforts to eliminate certain legal and illegal forms of discrimination and persecution, and are giving financial support to much of the religious work and most of the private educational institutions among the blacks. The Inter-racial Committee of the War Work Council of the Y.M.C.A. has listed thirty-three social and economic agencies, and twenty-three religious agencies, in which members of both races are working co-operatively. It must be admitted, however, that many, if not most, of the white participants in work of this sort are affected by race-prejudice to the extent that they desire simply to ameliorate the lowly condition of the Negro, without altogether doing away with a certain wholesome degree of racial segregation. For the complete elimination of the flavour of condescension, one must usually seek out those extreme socialist and syndicalist agitators who preach political or non-political class-organization, as a substitute for the familiar national and racial groupings.

In the case of the American Indian, the prejudice and self-interest of the white majority have placed the emphasis on geographic rather than social segregation. Here the demand of the whites has been for land rather than for labour, and by consequence servility has never been regarded as a prime virtue of Indian character.

If the early white settlers had so desired, they of course could have enslaved a considerable portion of the Indian population, just as the Spaniards did, in regions farther to the southward. However, the Americans chose to drive the Indians inland, and to replace them in certain regions with African tribesmen who in their native state had been perhaps as war-like as the Indians themselves. Thus in the natural course of events the African warrior was lost in the slave, while the Indian chief continued to be the military opponent rather than the economic servant of exploitation, and eventually gained romantic interest by virtue of this fact. The nature of this operation of debasement on one hand, and ennoblement on the other, is plainly revealed in American literature. The latter phase of the work is carried forward to-day with great enthusiasm by the Camp Fire Girls and the Boy Scouts, whose devotion to the romantic ideal of Indian life is nowhere paralleled by a similar interest in African tribal lore.

If the Indian has been glorified by remote admirers, he has also been cordially disliked by some of his nearest neighbours, and indeed the treatment he has received at the hands of the Government seems to reflect the latter attitude rather than the former. In theory, most of the Indian reservations are still regarded as subject principalities, and the Indians confined within their boundaries are almost entirely cut off from the economic, social, and political life of the neighbouring white communities. Many of the tribes still receive yearly governmental grants of food, clothing, arms, and ammunition, but these allowances only serve to maintain them in a condition of dependence, without providing any means of exit from it. In justice it should be said, however, that the Government has declared an intention to make the Indian self-supporting, and accordingly it restricts the grants, in principle, to the old and the destitute. Several States have shown their complete sympathy with the system of segregation by enacting laws prohibiting the inter-marriage of Indians and whites.

On the other hand, the mental and moral Americanization of the red man has been undertaken by Protestant and Catholic missions, and more recently by Government schools. The agencies of the latter sort are especially systematic in their work of depriving the Indian of most of the qualities for which he has been glorified in romance, as well as those for which he has been disliked by his neighbours. Many a Western town enjoys several times each year the spectacle of Indian school-boys in blue uniforms and Indian school-girls in pigtails and pinafores, marching in military formation through its streets. As long as these marchers are destined for a return to the reservation, the townsmen can afford to look upon them with mild curiosity. The time for a new adjustment of inter-racial relations will not come until the procession turns towards the white man’s job on the farm and in the factory--if it ever does turn that way.

Attention has already been called to the fact that the Jewish immigrant normally marches from the dock directly to the arena of economic competition. Accordingly his progress is not likely to be at any time the object of mere curiosity. On the other hand, the manifestations of prejudice against the Jew have been less aggressive and much less systematic than those repressive activities which affect the other minorities. Where anti-Semitism is present in America, it seems to express itself almost entirely in social discrimination, in the narrow sense. On the other hand, economic, political, and educational opportunities are opened to the Jews with a certain amount of reluctance. A major exception to this rule of discrimination must be made in the case of those socialists, syndicalists and trade-unionists who have diligently sought the support of the Jewish workers.

The Chinaman has also some friends now among the people who once regarded him as the blackest of villains. Indeed, the Californian’s attitude toward the Orientals has in it an element of unconscious irony which somewhat illuminates the character of the race-problem. The average Easterner will perhaps be surprised to learn that in Western eyes the Chinaman is an inferior, of course, but nevertheless an honest man, noted for square dealing and the prompt payment of his debts, while the Jap is a tricky person whom one should never trust on any account.

In California the baiting of the Japanese is now almost as much a part of political electioneering as is the abuse of the Negro in the South. The Native Sons of the Golden West and the American Legion have gone on record in determined opposition to any expansion of Japanese interests in California, while the Japanese Exclusion League is particularly active in trouble-making propaganda. Economic discrimination has taken statutory form in the Alien Land Laws of 1913 and 1920; discriminatory legislation of the same general type has been proposed in Texas and Oregon; a bill providing for educational segregation has been presented for a second time at Sacramento; Congress has been urged to replace the “gentlemen’s agreement” with an absolute prohibition of Japanese immigration; and there is even a demand for a constitutional amendment which will deny citizenship to the American-born children of aliens who are themselves ineligible for naturalization. The method of legislation is perhaps preferable to the method of force and violence, but if the previous history of race-prejudice means anything, it means that force will be resorted to if legislation fails. At bottom, the spirit of the California Land Laws is more than a little like that of a Georgia lynching; in the one case as in the other, the dominant race attempts to maintain its position, not by a man-to-man contest, with fair chances all around, but by depositing itself bodily and _en masse_ on top of the subject people and crushing them.

If in the realm of individual conduct this sort of behaviour works injury to the oppressor, as well as to the oppressed, it is not otherwise where masses of men are concerned. Stephen Graham, in his recent book, “The Soul of John Brown,” says that “in America to-day, and especially in the South, there is a hereditary taint left by slavery, and it is to be observed in the descendants of the masters as much as in the descendants of the slaves. It would be a mistake to think of this American problem as exclusively a Negro problem.” Indeed, it is true that in every case the race-problem is the problem of the majority as well as of the minority, for the former can no more escape the reaction of prejudice than the latter can escape its direct effects.

To-day the white South is still under the influence of a system of life and thought that is far more enduring than the one institution which gave it most complete expression. The Emancipation abolished slavery, but it did not rid the master of the idea that it is his right to live by the labour of the slave. The black man is not yet relieved of the duty of supporting a certain proportion of the white population in leisure; nor does it appear that the leisured Southerner of to-day makes a better use of his time than his ancestors did before him. Indeed, an historian who judged the peoples chiefly by their contribution to science and the arts would still be obliged to condemn the white South, not for enslaving the Negro, but for dissipating in the practices of a barren gentility the leisure that Negro labour created, and still creates, so abundantly. It is notorious also that in the South the airs of gentility have been more widely broadcast among the white population than the leisure necessary for their practice, with the result that much honest work which could not be imposed upon the black man has been passed on to posterity, and still remains undone.

Any one who seeks to discover the cause of the mental lethargy that has converted the leisure of the South so largely into mere laziness must take some account of a factor that is always present where race-prejudice exists. The race which pretends to superiority may not always succeed in superimposing itself economically upon the inferior group; and yet the pride and self-satisfaction of the members of the “superior” race will pretty surely make for indolence and the deadening of the creative spirit. This will almost inevitably be true where the superiority of the one race is acknowledged by the other, and where no contest of wits is necessary for the maintenance of the _status quo_. This is the condition that has always obtained, and still obtains in most of the old slave territory. In Dixie it is a career simply to go through life inside of a white skin. However ignorant and worthless the white man may be, it is still his privilege to proclaim on any street corner that he is in all respects a finer creature than any one of several million human beings whom he classes all together as “good-for-nothin’ niggers.” If the mere statement of this fact is not enough to bring warm applause from all the blacks in the neighbourhood, the white man is often more than willing to use fire and sword to demonstrate a superiority which he seldom stoops to prove in any other fashion. Naturally this feeling of God-given primacy tends to make its possessors indolent, immune to new ideas of every sort, and quite willing to apply “the short way with the nigger” to any one who threatens the established order of the universe.

It would be foolish indeed to suppose that the general intolerance, bigotry, and backwardness which grow out of race-prejudice have affected the South alone. The North and the West have their prejudices too, their consciousness of a full-blooded American superiority that does not have to be proved, their lazy-mindedness, their righteous anger, their own short way with what is new and strange. No sane man will attribute the origin of all these evils to race-prejudice alone, but no honest man will deny that the practice of discrimination against the racial minorities has helped to infect the whole life and thought of the country with a cocky and stupefying provincialism.

Perhaps the most interesting phase of the whole racial situation in America is the attitude which the minorities themselves have maintained in the presence of a dominant prejudice which has constantly emphasized and magnified the differences between the minorities and majority, and has even maintained the spirit of condescension, and the principle of segregation in such assimilative activities as education and Christian mission work. One would naturally expect that such an attitude on the part of the majority would stimulate a counter race-prejudice in each of the minorities, which would render them also intent upon the maintenance of differentiation.

Although such a counter prejudice has existed from the beginning among the Indians, the Jews, and the Asiatics, it is only now beginning to take form among the Negroes. The conditions of the contact between the black minority and the white majority have thus been substantially different from those which existed in the other cases, and the results of this contact seem to justify the statement that, so long as it remains _one-sided_, the strongest race-prejudice cannot prevent the cultural and even the biological assimilation of one race to another. In other words, prejudice defeats itself, in a measure, just so long as one of the parties accepts an inferior position; in fact, it becomes fully effective only when the despised group denies its own inferiority, and throws the reproach back upon those with whom it originated. Thus the new racial self-consciousness of a small section of the Negro population gives the prejudiced whites a full measure of the differentiation they desire, coupled with an absolute denial of the inferiority which is supposed to justify segregation.

It has already been pointed out that the enslavement of the Negroes deprived them of practically everything to which racial pride might attach itself, and left them with no foundation of their own on which to build. Thus they could make no advances of any sort except in so far as they were permitted to assimilate the culture of the white man. In the natural course of events, the adoption of the English language came first, and then shortly the Negro was granted such a share in the white man’s heaven as he has never yet received of the white man’s earth. As the only available means of self-expression, religion took a tremendous hold upon the slaves, and from that day to this, the black South has wailed its heart out in appeals to the white man’s God for deliverance from the white man’s burden. The Negro “spirituals” are not the songs of African tribesmen, the chants of free warriors. Indeed, the white man may claim full credit for the sadness that darkens the Negro’s music, and put such words as these into the mouth of the Lord:

Go down, Moses,
Way down in Egyp’ lan’
Tell ole Pharaoh
Le’ ma people go!
Israel was in Egyp’ lan’
Oppres’ so hard dey could not stan’,
Le’ ma people go!

When casual observers say that the black man is naturally more religious than the white, they lose sight of the fact that the number of church-members per thousand individuals in the Negro population is about the same as the average for the United States as a whole; and they forget also the more important fact that the Negro has never had all he wanted of anything except religion--and in segregated churches at that. It is more true of the black men than of Engel’s proletarians, that they have been put off for a very long time with checks on the bank of Heaven.

Emancipation and the Fourteenth Amendment seemed to open the path to an earthly paradise; but this vision was soon eclipsed by a second Civil War that resulted in a substantial victory for the white South. Economic repression could not be made entirely effective, however, and in the fifty-three years from 1866 to 1919 the number of American Negro homeowners increased from 12,000 to 600,000 and the number of Negroes operating farms from 20,000 to 1,000,000. In 1910 the Negro population still remained 72.6 per cent. rural, but the cityward movement of the blacks during the years 1890 to 1910 was more rapid than that of the whites. Education has directly facilitated economic progress, and has resulted in an increase of literacy among the Negroes from ten per cent. in 1866 to eighty per cent. in 1919. During the period 1900 to 1910, the _rate_ of increase of literacy among the blacks was much more rapid than that among the whites. Thus from the day he was cut off from his own inheritance, the American Negro has reached out eagerly for an alien substitute, until to-day, in practically everything that has to do with culture, he is not black but white--and artificially retarded.

Since America has deprived the Negro of the opportunity to grow up as an African, and at the same time has denied him the right to grow up as a white man, it is not surprising that a few daring spirits among the Negroes have been driven at last to the conclusion that there is no hope for their race except in an exodus from the white man’s culture and the white man’s continent. The war did a great deal to prepare the way for this new movement; the Negroes of America heard much talk of democracy not meant for their ears; their list of wrongs was lengthened, but at the same time their economic power increased; and many of them learned for the first time what it meant to fight back. Some of them armed themselves, and began to talk of taking two lives for one when the lynching-mob came. Then trouble broke in Chicago and Washington--and the casualties were not all of one sort. Out of this welter of unrest and rebellion new voices arose, some of them calling upon the Negro workers to join forces with their white brothers; some fierce and vengeful, as bitterly denunciatory of socialism and syndicalism as of everything else that had felt the touch of the white man’s hand; some intoxicated, ecstatic with a new religion, preaching the glory of the black race and the hope of the black exodus.

With much travail, there finally came forth, as an embodiment of the extreme of race-consciousness, an organization called the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. This clan lays claim to a million members in the United States, the West Indies, South America and South Africa, and announces as its final object the establishment of a black empire in Africa. Connected with the U.N.I.A. are the Black Star Line, capitalized at $10,000,000, and the Negro Factories Corporation, capitalized at $2,000,000. Just what these astonishing figures mean in actual cash it is impossible to say, but this much is certain: the Black Star Line already owns three of the many vessels which--say the prophets of the movement--will some day ply among the Negro lands of the world.

To cap the climax, the U.N.I.A. held in New York City during the month of August, 1920, “the first International Negro Convention,” which drew up a Negro Declaration of Independence, adopted a national flag and a national anthem, and elected “a Provisional President of Africa, a leader for the American Negroes, and two leaders for the Negroes of the West Indies, Central and South America.”

The best testimony of the nature of this new movement is to be found in an astonishing pamphlet called the “Universal Negro Catechism,” and issued “by authority of the High Executive Council of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.” In this catechism one discovers such items as the following, under the head of “Religious Knowledge”:

Q. Did God make any group or race of men superior to another?

A. No; He created all races equal, and of one blood, to dwell
on all the face of the earth.

* * * * *

Q. What is the colour of God?

A. A spirit has neither colour, nor other natural parts, nor
qualities.

* * * * *

Q. If ... you had to think or speak of the colour of God, how
would you describe it?

A. As black; since we are created in His image and likeness.

* * * * *

Q. What did Jesus Christ teach as the essential principle of
true religion?

A. The universal brotherhood of man growing out of the
universal Fatherhood of God.

* * * * *

Q. Who is responsible for the colour of the Ethiopians?

A. The Creator; and what He has done cannot be changed. Read
Jeremiah 13:23.

* * * * *

Q. What prediction made in the 68th Psalm and the 31st Verse is
now being fulfilled?

A. “Princes shall come out of Egypt, Ethiopia shall soon
stretch out her hands unto God.”

* * * * *

Q. What does this verse prove?

A. That Negroes will set up their own government in Africa with
rulers of their own race.

* * * * *

Q. Will Negroes ever be given equal opportunity and treatment
in countries ruled by white men?

A. No; they will enjoy the full rights of manhood and liberty
only when they establish their own nation and government in
Africa.

Perhaps enough has already been said to make it clear that there exists in America no distinctive black culture which could spontaneously give rise to such a movement as this. Culturally the black man is American; biologically he is African. It is solely and entirely the prejudice of the American majority that has forced this group of Negroes to attempt to reconstruct a cultural and sentimental connection that was destroyed long ago. The task which faces the leaders of the new movement is one of almost insurmountable difficulty, for in spite of every sort of persecution, the general life and thought of America are still far more easily accessible to the Negro than is anything distinctively his own.

The cultural shipwreck of the Negro on the American shore has thus placed him more completely at the mercy of the majority than the other minorities have ever been. In the case of the Indians, the Jews, and the Orientals, the race-name has not stood simply for an incomplete Americanism, but for a positive cultural quality which has persisted in the face of all misfortune. These races were provisioned, so to speak, for a long siege, while the Negro had no choice but to eat out of the white man’s hand, or starve.

The reservation-system has reduced many of the Indian tribes to a state of economic dependence, but it has also helped to preserve their cultural autonomy. In most cases the isolated communities on the reservations are distinctly Indian communities. The non-material inheritance of the past has come down to the present generation in a fairly complete form, with the result that the Indian of to-day may usually take his choice between Indian culture and white. Under these conditions the labours of missionaries and educators have not been phenomenally successful, as is witnessed by the fact that the number of Protestant Christians per thousand Indians is still only about one-seventh as large as that for the Negroes, while the percentage of illiterates is much larger among the Indians. However, school attendance is increasing at a more rapid rate than among the whites, and the prospect is that the Government schools will eventually deprive the country of all that is attractive in Indian life.

Toward the close of the 19th century, the Indian’s resentment of the white man’s overbearing actions found expression in a religious movement which originated in Nevada and spread eastward till it numbered among its adherents nearly all the natives between the Rocky Mountains and the Missouri River. This messianic faith bore the name of a ceremonial connected with it, the Ghost Dance, and was based upon a divine revelation which promised the complete restoration of the Indian’s inheritance. Such doctrines have, of course, been preached in many forms and in many lands, but it is no great compliment to the amiability of American civilization that the gospel of deliverance has found so many followers among the Negroes, the Indians, and the Jews who dwell within the borders of the country.

It does not seem likely that the Zionist version of this gospel will produce any general exodus of the last-named minority from this country, for in spite of prejudice, the Jews have been able to make a large place for themselves in the United States. Since the movements of the Jews have not been systematically restricted, as those of the Negroes and the Indians have been, the great concentration of the Jewish population in the cities of the East would seem to be due in large measure to the choice of the Jews themselves. At the present time they dominate the clothing industry, the management of the theatre, and the production of motion-pictures. Approximately one-tenth of the trade-unionists in the United States are Jews, and the adherence of a considerable number of Jews to the doctrines of socialism and syndicalism has unquestionably been one of the causes of prejudice against the race.

In matters that pertain more directly to the intellectual life, the Jews have exhibited every degree of eagerness for, and opposition to, assimilation. There are among them many schools for the teaching of the Hebrew language, and some other schools--private and expensive ones--in which only non-Jewish, “all-American” teachers are employed. Of the seventy-eight Jewish periodicals published in the United States, forty-eight are printed in English. In every Jewish centre, Yiddish theatres have been established for the amusement of the people; but Jewish managers, producers, actors, and playwrights have also had a large part in the general dramatic activities of the country. Finally, in the matter of religion, the response of the Jews to Christian missionary work has been very slight indeed, while, on the other hand, the number of synagogue-members per thousand Jews is only about one-fourth the general average of religious affiliation for the United States as a whole. When one considers the fact that in some fields the Jews have thus made advances in spite of opposition, while in others they have refused opportunities offered to them, it seems at least probable that the incompleteness of their cultural assimilation is due as much to their own racial pride as to the prejudice of the majority.

Similarly in the case of the Orientals, the pride and self-sufficiency of the minority has helped to preserve for it a measure of cultural autonomy. In the absence of such a disposition on the part of the Chinese, it would be difficult to account for the fact that their native costume has not disappeared during the thirty-nine years since the stoppage of immigration. San Francisco’s Chinatown still remains very markedly Chinese in dress largely because the Chinese themselves have chosen to keep it so. The Japanese have taken much more kindly to the conventional American costume, but one is hardly justified in inferring from this that they are more desirous for general assimilation. Indeed, one would expect the opposite to be the case, for most of the Japanese in America had felt the impress of the nationalistic revival in Japan before their departure from that country. In a measure this accounts for the fact that Japanese settlers have established a number of Buddhist temples and Japanese-language schools in the United States. However, figures furnished by the “Joint Committee on Foreign Language Publications,” which represents a number of Evangelical denominations, seem to indicate that the Japanese in the United States are much more easily Christianized than the Chinese, and are even less attached to Buddhism than are the Jews to their native faith. In the nature of things, the domestic practice of Shinto-worship among the Japanese is incapable of statistical treatment.

Thus the combination of all the internal and external forces that affect the racial minorities in America has produced a partial, but by no means a complete, remodelling of minority-life in accordance with standards set by the majority. Prejudice and counter-prejudice have not prevented this change, and there is no accounting for the condition of the American minorities to-day without due attention to the positive factor of cultural assimilation, as well as to the negative factor of prejudice.

* * * * *

Since it has already been implied that a greater or less assimilation by the minorities of the culture of the majority is inevitable, it is apparent that the relation of this assimilative change to the biological fusion of the groups is a matter of ultimate and absolute importance. Wherever friction exists between racial groups, the mere mention of biological fusion is likely to stir up so much fire and smoke that all facts are completely lost to sight; and yet it is quite obvious that the forces of attraction and repulsion which play upon the several races in America have produced biological as well as cultural results.

The mulatto population of the United States is the physical embodiment of a one-sided race-prejudice. By law, by custom, even by the visitation of sudden and violent death, the master-class of the South expresses a disapproval of relations between white women and coloured men, which does not apply in any forcible way to similar relations between white men and coloured women. The white male is in fact the go-between for the races. The Negroes have not the power, and sometimes not even the will, to protect themselves against his advances, and the result is that illegitimate mulatto children in great numbers are born of Negro mothers and left to share the lot of the coloured race.

If the infusion of white blood were stopped entirely, the proportion of mulattoes in the Negro race would nevertheless go on increasing, since the children of a mulatto are usually mulattoes, whether the other parent be mulatto or black. There is, however, no reason for supposing that under such conditions the proportion of mulattoes to blacks would increase _more_ rapidly in one geographic area than in another. The fact is that during the period 1890 to 1910 the number of mulattoes per 1,000 blacks _decreased_ in the North from 390 to 363, and _increased_ in the South from 159 to 252; the inference as to white parenthood is obvious. During the same period the black population of the entire United States increased 22.7 per cent., while the mulatto population increased 81.1 per cent. The mulatto group is thus growing far more rapidly than either the black or the white, and the male white population of the South is largely responsible for the present expansion of this class, as well as for its historical origin.

Thus the South couples a maximum of repression with a maximum of racial intermixture; indeed, the one is naturally and intimately associated with the other. The white population as a whole employs all manner of devices to keep the Negro in the social and economic status most favourable to sexual promiscuity, and aggressive white males take full advantage of the situation thus created.

While it is not generally admitted in the South that the progressive whitening of the black race is a natural result of the maintenance of a system of slavery and subjection, the converse of this proposition is stated and defended with all possible ardour. That is to say, it is argued that any general improvement in the condition of the Negro will increase the likelihood of racial intermixture on a higher level, through inter-marriage. The Southerners who put forth this argument know very well that inter-marriage is not likely to take place in the presence of strong race-prejudice, and they know, too, that the Negro who most arouses their animosity is the “improved” Negro who will not keep his place. They are unwilling to admit that this increase in prejudice is due largely, if not wholly, to the greater competitive strength of the improved Negro; and likewise they prefer to disregard the fact that such a Negro resents white prejudice keenly, and tends to exhibit on his own part a counter prejudice which in itself acts as an additional obstacle to inter-marriage.

In the absence of such factors as Negro self-consciousness and inter-racial competition, it would be difficult to account for the extreme rarity of marriages between blacks and whites in the Northern States. No comprehensive study of this subject has been made, but an investigation conducted by Julius Drachsler has shown that of all the marriages contracted by Negroes in New York City during the years 1908 to 1912, only 0.93 per cent. were mixed. The same investigation revealed the fact that Negro men contracted mixed marriages about four times as frequently as Negro women.

Marriages between whites and Indians have not been so vigorously condemned by the American majority as those between whites and Negroes, and the presumption is that the former have been much more frequent. However, it appears that no systematic investigation of Indian mixed marriages has been made, and certainly no census previous to that of 1910 gives any data of value on the subject of mixed blood among the Indians. The enumeration of 1910 showed that 56.5 per cent. of the Indians were full-blooded, 35.2 per cent. were of mixed blood, and 8.4 per cent. were unclassified. Although it is impossible to fix the responsibility as definitely here as in the case of the Negro, it is obvious that an infusion of white blood half again as great as that among the Negroes cannot be accounted for in any large part by racial inter-marriages. Without question, it is chiefly due to the same sort of promiscuity that has been so common in the South, and the present and potential checks upon the process of infusion are similar to those already discussed.

In the case of the Jews and the Asiatics, it seems that the only figures available are those gathered by Drachsler. He found that only 1.17 per cent. of the marriages contracted by Jews in New York City during the years 1908 to 1912 were classifiable as “mixed,” while the corresponding percentages for the Chinese and the Japanese were 55.56 and 72.41 respectively. The largeness of the figures in the case of Orientals is accounted for in part by the fact that there are comparatively few women of Mongolian race in New York City. Besides this, it must be remembered that, whatever the degree of their cultural assimilation, the Chinese and Japanese residents of the metropolis are not sufficiently numerous to form important competitive groups, while the Jews constitute one-quarter of the entire population of the city. Does any one doubt that the situation in regard to mixed marriages would be partially reversed in San Francisco?

When due allowance is made for special conditions, Drachsler’s figures do not seem to run contrary to the general proposition that an improvement in the economic and social condition of one of the minorities, and a partial or complete adoption by the minority of the culture of the majority, does not necessarily prepare the way for racial fusion, but seems to produce exactly the opposite effect by increasing the competitive power of the minority, the majority’s fear of its rivals, and the prejudice of each against the other.

In spite of all that prejudice can do to prevent it, the economic, social, and intellectual condition of the minorities is becoming increasingly like that of the majority; and yet it is not to be expected that as long as the minorities remain physically recognizable this change will result in the elimination of prejudice, nor is it likely that the cultural assimilation which checks the process of racial intermixture through promiscuous intercourse will result automatically in intermixture on a higher level, and the consequent disappearance of the recognizability of the minorities. Prejudice does not altogether prevent cultural assimilation; cultural assimilation increases competitive strength without eliminating recognizability; competitive strength _plus_ recognizability produces more prejudice; and so on ... and so on.... Thus it seems probable that race-prejudice will persist in America as long as the general economic, social, political, and intellectual system which has nurtured it endures. No direct attack upon the race-problem, as such, can alter this system in any essential way.

Is this conception sound, or not? It stands very high upon a slim scaffolding of facts, put together in pure contrariness after it had been stated that no adequate foundation for such a structure could be found anywhere. But, after all, it is no great matter what happens to the notion that race-prejudice can be remedied only incidentally. If the conditions which surround race-prejudice are only studied comparatively, this notion and others like it will get all the attention they deserve.

_RACE PROBLEMS_

(The answers are merely by way of suggestion, but the questions may prove to be worthy of serious attention.)

Q. Has the inherent inferiority of any human race been
established by historical, biological or psychological evidence?

A. No.

* * * * *

Q. Does the theory of the inequality of human races offer a
satisfactory explanation of the existence of race-prejudice?

A. No.

* * * * *

Q. Do physical characteristics make the members of the several
races recognizable?

A. Yes.

* * * * *

Q. Is race-prejudice inherent and inevitable, in the sense that
it always exists where two recognizably different races are in
contact?

A. No.

* * * * *

Q. How does it happen that in the presence of _racial_
factors which remain constant, race-prejudice exists in some
localities, and is absent in others?

A. No satisfactory explanation of these local variations in
inter-racial feeling has yet been given; however, the existence
of the variations themselves would seem to indicate that
the primary causes of race-prejudice are _not racial_ but
_regional_.

* * * * *

Q. What study will lead most directly to an understanding of
race-prejudice--that of universal racial differences, or that
of regional environmental differences which are associated with
the existence and non-existence of racial prejudice?

A. The latter.

* * * * *

Q. Does the systematic study of regional environmental
differences in the United States, in their relation to
race-prejudice, yield any results of importance?

A. No such systematic study has ever been made; a casual
glance seems to reveal an interesting coincidence between
race-prejudice and the fear of competition.

* * * * *

Q. Is competition more likely to produce race-prejudice in the
United States than elsewhere?

A. Because of the general preoccupation of the American people
with material affairs, _economic_ competition is likely to
produce unusually sharp antagonisms.

* * * * *

Q. Does the coincidence between race-prejudice and the fear of
competition offer a complete explanation of the existence and
strength of race-prejudice in the United States?

A. No; no such claim has been advanced.

* * * * *

Q. Is the assimilation by the minorities of the culture of the
majority taking place continuously, in spite of the prejudice
of the majority and the counter-prejudice of three of the
minorities?

A. Yes.

* * * * *

Q. Does this cultural assimilation make for better inter-racial
feeling?

A. Probably not, because as long as physical race-differences
remain, cultural assimilation increases the strength of the
minority as a _recognizable_ competitive group, and hence
it also increases the keenness of the rivalry between the
minorities and the majority.

Q. How can the recognizability of the minorities be eliminated?

A. By blood-fusion with the majority.

Q. How can blood-fusion come about if cultural assimilation
increases rivalry and prejudice?

A. ............................... .

Q. Is it then true that, as things stand, the future of
inter-racial relations in the United States depends upon the
ratio between cultural assimilation, which seems inevitable,
and biological assimilation, which seems unlikely?

A. It so appears.

Q. Does the race-problem in the United States then seem
practically insoluble as a separate problem?

A. It does.

Q. Has the race-problem ever been solved anywhere by direct
attack upon it as a _race_ problem?

A. Probably not.

Q. Does not this conclusion involve a return to the assumption
that race-prejudice is inevitable wherever race-differences
exist; and has this not been emphatically denied?

A. On the contrary, the implication is that race-prejudice is
inevitable where _race-prejudice_ exists. The conclusion in
regard to the United States is based on the single assumption
that the _non-racial_ conditions under which race-prejudice has
arisen will remain practically unchanged.

Q. Is it then conceivable that a complete alteration of
non-racial conditions--as, for instance, an economic
revolution which would change the whole meaning of the word
“competition”--might entirely revise the terms of the problem?

A. It is barely conceivable--but this paper is not an accepted
channel for divine revelation.

GEROID TANQUARY ROBINSON

ADVERTISING

Do I understand you to say that you do not believe in advertising? Indeed! Soon you will be telling me that you do not believe in God. Though, to be sure, in so doing you would be committing less of a crime against the tenets of modern American civilization than in doubting the existence of a power so great that overnight it can raise up in our midst gods, kings, and other potentates, creating a world which for splendour and opulence far surpasses our own poor mortal sphere--a world in which every prospect pleases and only the reluctant spender is vile.

True, we can only catch a fleeting glimpse of its many marvels. True, we have scarcely time to admire a millionth part of the joys and magnificence of one before a new and greatly improved universe floats across the horizon, and, from every corner news-stand, smilingly bids us enter its portals. True, I repeat, our inability to grasp or appreciate the full wonder of these constantly arriving creations, yet even the narrow limitations of our savage and untutored minds can hardly prevent us from acclaiming a miracle we fail to understand.

If it were only given me to live the life led by any one of the fortunate creatures that dwell in these advertising worlds, I should gladly renounce my home, my wife, and my evil ways and become the super-snob of a mock creation. All day long should I stand smartly clad in a perfectly fitting union-suit just for the sport of keeping my obsequious butler waiting painfully for me with my lounging-gown over his exhausted arm. On other days I should be found sitting in mute adoration before a bulging bowl of breakfast food, and, if any one should chance to be listening at the keyhole, they might even catch me in the act of repeating reverently and with an avid smile on my lips, “I can never stir from the table until I have completely crammed myself with Red-Blooded American Shucks,” adding in a mysterious whisper, “To be had at all good grocers.”

There would be other days of course, days when I should ride in a motor of unrivalled power with companions of unrivalled beauty, across canyons of unrivalled depth and mountains of unrivalled height. Then would follow still other days, the most perfect days of all, days when the snow-sheathed earth cracks in the clutches of an appalling winter and only the lower classes stir abroad. This would be the time that I should select for removing the lounging gown from my butler’s arm and bask in the glowing warmth of my perfect heater, with my chair placed in such a position as to enable me to observe the miserable plight of my neighbours across the way as they strive pitifully to keep life in their bodies over the dying embers of an anæmic fire. The sight of the sobbing baby and haggard mother would only serve to intensify my satisfaction in having been so fortunate and far-sighted as to have possessed myself of a Kill Kold Liquid Heat Projector--That Keeps the Family Snug.

What days I should spend! Take the literary days, for instance. Could anything be more edifying than to dip discriminatingly into a six-inch bookshelf with the absolute assurance that a few minutes spent thus each day in dipping would, in due course of time, give me complete mastery of all the best literature of the world--and incidentally gain for me a substantial raise at the office? Nor could any of the literature of the past ages equal my hidden library of books containing Vital Secrets. In this room there would linger a never-failing thrill. Here I should retreat to learn the secret of success, the secret of salesmanship, the secret of vigour, the secret of bull-dozing one’s boss, the secret of spell-binding, the secret of personality and social charm, all bearing a material value measured in dollars and cents. In time I should so seethe with secrets that, unable to bear them any longer, I should break down before my friends and give the whole game away.

But why should I lacerate my heart in the contemplation of happiness I shall never experience? Why should I dwell upon the pipe-filling days, or the days when I should send for samples? Why torture my mind with those exquisitely tailored days when, with a tennis racket in one hand and a varsity crew captain on my shoulder, I should parade across the good old campus in a suit bereft of wrinkles and a hat that destroyed the last shreds of restraint in all beholding women? No, I can go no further.

For when I consider the remarkable characters that so charmingly infest my paradise never found, I cannot help asking myself, “How do they get that way?” How do the men’s legs grow so slim and long and their chins so smooth and square? Why have the women always such perfect limbs and such innocent but alluring smiles? Why are families always happy and children always good? What miracle has banished the petty irritations and deficiencies of life and smoothed out the problems of living? How and why--is there an answer? Can it all be laid at the door of advertising, or do we who read, the great, sweltering mass of us, insist upon such things and demand a world of artificial glamour and perfectly impossible people? The crime is committed by collusion, I am forced to conclude. Advertising, for the most part, makes its appeal to all that is superficial and snobbish in us, and we as a solid phalanx are only too glad to be appealed to in such a manner.

In only the most unscholarly way can I lay my reflections before you, and the first one is this: advertising is America’s crudest and most ruthless sport, religion, or profession, or whatever you choose to call it. With an accurate stroke, but with a perverted intent, it coddles and toys with all that is base and gross in our physical and spiritual compositions. The comforts and happiness it holds out to the reader are for ever contrasted with the misery and misfortune of another. Thus, if I ride in a certain make of motor, I have the satisfaction of knowing that every one who rides in a motor of another make is of a lower caste than myself and will certainly eat dust for the rest of his life. There is a real joy in this knowledge. Again, if I wear a certain advertised brand of underwear, I have the pleasure of knowing that my fellow-men not so fortunately clad are undoubtedly foolish swine who will eventually die of sunstroke, after a life devoted entirely to sweating. Here, too, is a joy of rare order. If I brush my teeth with an advertised tooth paste, my satisfaction is enhanced by the knowledge that all other persons who fail to use this particular paste will in a very short time lose all of their teeth. In this there is a savage, but authentic delight. Even if I select a certain classic from my cherished six-inch bookshelf, I shall have a buoyant feeling in knowing that all men, who, after the fatigue of the day, take comfort in the latest murder or ball-game, are of inferior intellect and will never succeed in the world of business.

This is one of the most successful weapons used in advertising, and there is no denying that a great majority of people take pleasure in being struck by it. It is a pleasure drawn from the same source that feeds so many people’s sense of satisfaction when they attend a funeral, or call on a sick friend, or a friend in misfortune and disgrace. It was the same source of inner satisfaction which made it possible for many loyal citizens to bear not only with fortitude, but with bliss, the sorrows of the late war. It is the instinct of self-preservation, toned down to a spirit of complacent self-congratulation, and it responds most readily to the appeal of selfishness and snobbery. Advertising did not create this instinct, nor did it discover it, but advertising uses it for its own ends. Who is to blame, the reader or the advertiser, hardly enters in at this point. The solid fact to take into consideration is that day in and day out the susceptible public is being worked upon in an unhealthy and neurotic manner which cannot fail to effect harmful results.

At this tragic moment I purpose briefly to digress to the people who create advertisements, before returning to a consideration of the effects of their creations.

To begin with, let it never be forgotten that advertising is a red-blooded, two-fisted occupation, engaged in for the most part by upstanding Americans of the kiss-the-flag or knock-’em-down-and-drag-’em-out variety. Yet years of contact with the profession compel me for the sake of truth to temper this remark by adding that it also contains, or rather confines, within its mystic circle a group of reluctant and recalcitrant “creatures that once were men,” who, moving through a phantasmagoria of perverted idealism, flabby optimism, and unexamined motives, either deaden their conscience in the twilight of the “Ad. Men’s Club,” or else become so blindly embittered or debauched that their usefulness is lost to all constructive movements.

Generally speaking, however, advertising is the graveyard of literary aspiration in which the spirits of the defeated aspirants, wielding a momentary power over a public that rejected their efforts, blackjack it into buying the most amazing assortment of purely useless and cheaply manufactured commodities that has ever marked the decline of culture and common sense. These men are either caught early after their flight from college, or else recruited from the newspaper world. Some--the most serious and determined--are products of correspondence schools. Others are merely robust spirits whose daily contact with their fellow-men does not give them sufficient opportunity to disgorge themselves of the abundance of misinformation that their imaginations manufacture in wholesale quantities. This advertising brotherhood is composed of a heterogeneous mass of humanity that is rapidly converted into a narrow-minded wedge of fanatics. And this wedge is continually boring into the pocketbook of the public and extracting therefrom a goodly quantity of gold and silver. Have you ever conversed with one of the more successful and important members of this vast body? If so have you been able to quit the conversation with an intelligent impression of its subject-matter? For example: do you happen to know what a visualizer is? If not, you would be completely at the mercy of a true advertising exponent. Returning to my Edisonian method of attack, do you happen to know by any chance what a rough-out man is, or what is the meaning of dealer mortality, quality appeal, class circulation, or institutional copy? Probably not, for there is at bottom very little meaning to them; nevertheless, they are terms that are sacred to a great number of advertising men, and which, if unknown, would render all intelligent communication with them quite impossible.

If you should ever attend a session of these gentlemen in full cry--and may God spare you this--you would return from it with the impression that all was not well with the world. You would have heard speeches on the idealism of meat-packing, and other kindred subjects. The idealism would be transmitted to you through the medium of a hireling of some large packing organization, a live-wire, God-bless-you, hail-fellow type. Assuming that you had been there, you would have witnessed this large fellow with a virile exhalation of cigar-smoke, heave himself from his chair; you would have observed a good-natured smile play across his lips, and then you would have suddenly been taken aback by the tenderly earnest and masterfully restrained expression that transformed our buffoon into a suffering martyr, as, flinging out his arms, he tragically exclaimed, “Gentlemen, you little know the soul of the man who has given the Dreadnought Ham to the world!” From this moment on your sense of guilt would have increased by leaps and bounds until at last you would have broken down completely and agreed with everything the prophet said, as long as he refrained from depriving you of an opportunity to make it up to the god-like man who gave Dreadnought Hams to the world.