Chapter EIGHT: Problems of Population (2)

The last few years have witnessed a great advance of this new movement. The political power of the negro is less than ever, and the former illegal measures to circumvent it are no longer needed. It cannot be denied that in two ways this works directly in the interests of civilization. On the one hand, it incites the negro population to take measures for the education of its children, since by going to school the negro can comply with the conditions of suffrage. On the other hand, it frees Southern politics from the oppressive race question, and allows real party problems to become once more active issues among the whites. The political contrast is, therefore, to-day somewhat lessened, although both parties regard it rather as a mere cessation of hostilities; since it is by no means certain that Northern political forces at Washington will not once more undo this infringement on the negroes’ rights, and whether once more, in case of a real party division between the Southern whites, the negroes will not have the deciding vote. If the doctrinarianism of the North should actually prevail and be able to set aside these examinations in reading and in intelligence which have been aimed against the negro, on the ground that they are contrary to the Constitution, it would indeed frustrate a great movement toward political peace. When the abolitionists at the end of the Civil War granted the suffrage to the negroes, they were at least able to adduce one very good excuse; they claimed that the Southern States would continue in some new form to hold the negro in subjection if he was not protected by either a military guard or by his right to vote, and since the army was to be disbanded the right to vote was given him. To-day there is no such danger; the legal exclusion of the Southern negro from the ballot-box must be accounted an advance.

The social question, however, is even more important to-day than the political one, and it is one which grows day by day. We have said already that the Southerner has no instinctive aversion to the negro race, and his desire for racial purity is not an instinct but a theory, of which the fathers of the present white man knew nothing. To be sure, the situation cannot be simply formulated, but it probably comes nearest to the truth to say that the white man’s hatred is the inherited instinct of the slave-holder. In all his sentiments the Southerner is dominated by the once natural feeling that the negro is his helpless subject. The white man is not cruel in this; he wants to protect the negro and to be kind, but he can allow him no will of his own. He has accustomed himself to the slavish obedience of the negro, as the opium-eater is accustomed to his opium. And to give up the paralyzing drug is intolerable to his nervous system.

The everywhere repeated cry that the purity of the race is in danger, if social equality is established, is only a pretext; it is in truth the social equality itself which calls forth the hysterical excitement. No white man, for instance, in the South would go into the dining-room of a hotel in which a single negro woman should be sitting; but this is not because a mere proximity would be disagreeable, as it would actually be to the Northerner, but because he could not endure such appearance of equality. So soon as a little white child sits beside the negro woman, so that she is seen to be a servant and her socially inferior station is made plain, then her presence is no longer felt to be at all disagreeable.

In his fight against social equality with the negro, the Southerner resorts to more and more violent means; and while he works himself up to an increasing pitch of excitement by the energy of his opposition, the resulting social humiliation increases the embitterment of the negro. That no white hotel, restaurant, theatre, or sleeping-car is open to the black is a matter of course; this is virtually true also in the North. But it has contributed very much to renewed disaffection, that also the ordinary railroad trains and street cars begin to make a similar distinction.

The South is putting a premium on every kind of harsh social affront to the black man, and relentlessly punishes the slightest social recognition. When the president of a negro college was the guest of a Northern hotel and the chamber-maid refused to put his room to rights and was therefore dismissed, the South got together, by a popular subscription, a large purse for this heroine. It is only from this point of view that one can understand the great excitement which swept through the South when President Roosevelt had the courage to invite to his table Booker T. Washington, the most distinguished negro of the country. Professor Basset, the historian, has declared, amid the fierce resentment of the South, that, with the exception of General Lee, Booker Washington is the greatest man who has been born in the South for a hundred years. But who inquires after the merits of a single man when the principle of social inequality is at stake? If the President had worked for several months from early to late at his desk with Booker T. Washington, the fact would have passed unnoticed. But it is simply unpardonable that he invited him to the luncheon table, and even very thoughtful men have shaken their heads in the opinion that this affront to the social superiority of the white man will very sadly sharpen the mutual antagonism.

We must not overlook in this connection the various minor circumstances which have strengthened the lingering feeling of the slave-owner. First of all, there is the unrestrained sensuality of the negro, which has led him time after time to attempt criminal aggressions on white women, and so contributed infinitely to the misery of his situation. It is a gross exaggeration when the Southern demagogue reiterates again and again that no man in the South can feel that his wife, his sister, or daughter is secure from the bestiality of the blacks; and yet it cannot be denied that such crimes are shockingly frequent, and they are the more significant, since the continual fear of this danger seriously threatens the growth of farming life with its lonely farm-houses. Here the barbarities of lynch law have come in, and the rapid growth of racial hatred may be seen in the increased number of lynchings during recent years. But every lynching reacts to inoculate hatred and cruel ferocity in the public organism, and so the bestial instincts and the lawless punishments work together to debase the masses in the Southern States.

It is not only a question of the immorality of the negro and the lynch courts of the white man, but in other ways the negro shows himself inclined to crime, and the white man to all sorts of lawless acts against him. The negroes are disproportionately represented in Southern prisons, although this comes partly from the fact that the black man is punished for the slightest misdemeanour, while the white man is readily let off. In fact, it is difficult in the South to find a jury to convict a white man of any crime done against a negro. This application of a two-fold standard of justice leads quickly to a general arbitrariness which fits only too well with the natural instincts of the slave-holder. Arbitrary privileges in place of equal rights have always been the essential point in his existence, and so it happens that even where no negroes are in question Southern juries hand down verdicts which scandalize the whole country. Indeed, there is no doubt that secret attempts have even been made, in all sorts of devious forms, to re-establish the state of slavery. For some small misdemeanour negroes are condemned to pay a very heavy fine, and to furnish this they have to let themselves out to some sort of contract labour under white masters, which amounts to the same thing as slavery. Here again the whole country is horrified when the facts come to be known. But no means have yet been thought of for lessening the bitter hatred which exists, and so long as the sharp social contrast remains there will continue to be evasions and violations of the law, to give vent to the hatred and bitter feeling.

What now may one look for, that shall put an end to these unhappy doings? The Africans have had their Zionists, who wish to lead them back to their native forests in Africa, and many people have recently fancied that the problem would be solved by forcible deportation to the Philippines. These dreams are useless; nine million people cannot be dumped on the other side of the ocean, cannot be torn from their homes. Least of all could they be brought to combine with the entirely different population of the Philippines. More than that, the South itself would fight tooth and nail against losing so many labourers; it would be industrially ruined, and would be more grievously torn up than it was after the Civil War, if in fact some magic ship could carry every black to the negro republic of Liberia, on the African coast. For the same reason it is impracticable to bring together all negroes in one or two Southern States and leave them to work out their own salvation. In the first place, no state would be willing to draw this black lot, while the white population of the other Southern States would suffer fully as much. The student of social politics, finally, cannot doubt for a moment that the negro progresses only when he is in constant contact with white men, and degenerates with fearful speed when he is left to himself.

Among those negroes who have been called to be the leaders of their people, and who form an independent opinion of the situation, one finds two very different tendencies. One of these is to reform from the top down, the other from the bottom up. The energies of Dubois are typical of the first tendency, Booker Washington’s of the second. Dubois, and many of the most educated and advanced negroes with him, believe in the special mission of the negro race. The negro does not want to be, and ought not to be, a second order of American, but the United States are destined by Providence to develop two great and diverse but co-operating peoples, the Americans and the negroes. It is therefore the work of the African not simply to imitate the white man’s culture, but to develop independently a special culture suited to his own national traits. They feel instinctively that a few great men of special physiognomy, two or three geniuses coming from their race, will do more for the honour of their people and for the belief in its possibilities, than the slow elevation of the great mass. They lay strong emphasis on the fact that in his music, religion, and humour the negro has developed strongly individual traits, and that the people who forty years ago were in slavery have developed in a generation under unfavourable circumstances a number of shining orators, politicians, and writers. Thus they feel a most natural ambition to make away for the best and strongest, to elevate them, and to incite them to their highest achievements. The ideal is thus, in the work of the most gifted leaders to present to the world a new negro culture, by which the right of independent existence for the black race in America may be secured.

Booker Washington and his friends wish to go a quieter road; and he has with him the sympathies of the best white people in the country. They look for salvation not from a few brilliantly exceptional negroes, but from the slow and steady enlightenment of the masses; and their real leaders are to be not those who accomplish great things as individuals, but rather they who best serve in the slow work of uplifting their people. These men see clearly that there are to-day no indications of really great accomplishments and independent feats in the way of culture, and that such things are hardly to be looked for in the immediate future. At the very best it is a question of an unusual talent for imitating an alien culture.

If, then, one can hardly speak of brilliant genius in the upper strata—and it is to be admitted that Booker Washington himself is not a really great, independent, and commanding personality—it would be on the other hand much more distorted to estimate the negro from his lowest strata, from the lazy and criminal individuals. The great mass of negroes is uneducated and possesses no manual training for an occupation; but it is honest, healthy, and fit social material, which only needs to be trained in order to become valuable to the whole community. First of all, the negro ought to learn what he has once learned as a slave—a manual trade; he should perfect himself in work of the hands or in some honest agricultural occupation, not seek to create a new civilization, but more modestly to identify his race with the destinies of the white nation by real, honest, thoughtful, true, and industrious labour. Brilliant writers they do not need so much as good carpenters and school-teachers; nor notable individual escapades in the tourney-field of culture so much as a general dissemination of technical training. They need schools for manual training and institutes for the development of technical teachers.

Booker Washington’s own institution in Tuskegee has set the most admirable example, and the most thoughtful men in the North and South alike are very ready to help along all his plans. They hope and believe that so soon as the masses of coloured people have begun to show themselves somewhat more useful to the industry of the country as hand-workers, expert labourers, and farmers, that then the mutual embitterment will gradually die out and the fight for social equality slowly vanish. For on this point the more thoughtful men do not deceive themselves; social equality is nothing but a phrase when it is applied to the relation of millions of people to other millions. Among the whites themselves no one ever thinks of any real social equality; the owner of a plantation no more invites his white workmen in to eat with him than he would invite a coloured man. And when the Southern white replies scornfully to any one who challenges his prejudices, with the convincing question, “Would you let your sister marry a nigger?” he is forgetting, of course, that he himself would not let his sister marry nine-tenths of the white men of his community. Social equality can be predicated only of small groups, and in all exactness only of individuals.

Thus it might be said that peace is advanced to-day chiefly by the increasing exertions for the technical industrial education of the black workman. But it is not to be forgotten that the negro himself, and with him many philanthropists of the North, comprehends the whole situation very differently from the Southern supporters of the movement. These latter are contented with recent tendencies, because the negro’s vote is curtailed in the political sphere, and because he comes to be classed socially with the day-labourer and artisan. The negro, however, looks on this as a temporary stage in his development, and hopes in good time to outgrow it. He is glad that the election returns are no longer falsified on his account, and that legal means have been resorted to. But of course he hopes that he will soon grow beyond these conditions, and be finally favoured once more with the suffrage, just as any white man is.

It is much the same in the social sphere. He may be satisfied for the present that the advantages of manual training and farm labour are brought to the fore, but this must only be to lead his race up step by step until it has developed from a mere working class to entire social equality. That which the negro approves for the moment is what any white man in the Southern States would fix as a permanent condition. And so it appears that even in this wise no real solution of the problem has been reached, although a cessation of hostilities has been declared. But all these efforts on the part of leaders and philanthropists, these deliberations of the best whites and blacks in both the North and South, are still far from carrying weight with the general public; and thus, although the beginnings toward improvement are good, it remains that on the outside the situation looks to-day darker than ever before.

Whoever frees himself from theoretical doctrines will hardly doubt that the leading whites of the Southern States have to-day once more the better insight, since they know the negro better than the Northerners do. They demand that this limitation of the negro in his political rights and in his daily occupation shall be permanent, and that thus an organic situation shall come about in which the negro, although far removed from an undeserved slavery, shall be equally far from the complete enjoyment of that civilization which his own race has not worked out. That is, he is to be politically, economically, and socially dependent. If this had happened at the outset, the mutual hatred which now exists would never have been so fierce; and if the African succeeds materially he will hardly notice the difference, while the white man will feel with satisfaction that his superiority has been vindicated. The condition of the island of Jamaica is a good instance in point. Its inhabitants are strikingly superior to the debased negroes of the Republic of Hayti.

But it is not to be forgotten that history has repeatedly shown how impossible it is for a people numbering millions, with limited rights, to dwell in the midst of an entirely free race. Oppression and injustice constantly arise from the limitation of rights, and thence grow retaliation and crime. And the hour in which the American people narrow down the rights of ten million blacks may be the starting-point for fearful struggles. The fact remains that the real solution of the question is nowhere in sight. The negro question is the only really dark cloud on the horizon of the American nation.