Following the Color Line Part 44

_What Shall Be the Industrial Relation of the Races?_

So much for the political relationships of the races. How about the industrial relationships?

The same test of inherent worth must here also apply, and the question will not be settled until it does apply. A carpenter must be asked, not "What colour are you?" but "How cunningly and efficiently can you build a house?" Of all absurdities, the judgment of the skill of a surgeon by the kink of his hair will certainly one day be looked upon as the most absurd.

The same observation applies broadly to the attempt to confine a whole people, regardless of their capabilities, to menial occupations because they are dark-coloured. No, the place of the Negro is the place he can fill most efficiently and the longer we attempt to draw artificial lines the longer we shall delay the solution of the race problem. On the other hand, the Negro must not clamour for places he cannot yet fill.

"The trouble with the Negro," says Booker T. Washington, "is that he is all the time trying to get recognition, whereas what he should do is to get something to recognise."

Negroes as a cla.s.s are to-day far inferior in education, intelligence, and efficiency to the white people as a cla.s.s. Here and there an able Negro will develop superior abilities; but the ma.s.s of Negroes for years to come must find their activities mostly in physical and more or less menial labour. Like any race, they must first prove themselves in these simple lines of work before they can expect larger opportunities.

There must always be men like Dr. DuBois who agitate for rights; their service is an important one, but at the present time it would seem that the thing most needed was the teaching of such men as Dr. Washington, emphasising duties and responsibilities, urging the Negro to prepare himself for his rights.

_Social Contact_

We come now, having considered the political and industrial relationships of the races, to the most difficult and perplexing of all the phases of the Negro question--that of social contact. Political and industrial relationships are more or less outward, but social contact turns upon the delicate and deep questions of home life, personal inclinations, and of privileges rather than rights. It is always in the relationships of oldest developments, like those that cling around the home, that human nature is slowest to change. Indeed, much of the complexity of the Negro problem has arisen from a confusion in people's minds between rights and privileges.

Everyone recalls the excitement caused--it became almost a national issue--when President Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to luncheon at the White House. Well, that feeling is deep in the South, as deep almost as human nature. Many Northern people who go South to live come to share it; indeed, it is the gravest question in ethics to decide at what point natural instincts should be curbed.

Social contact is a privilege, not a right; it is not a subject for legislation or for any other sort of force. "Social questions," as Colonel Watterson of Kentucky says, "create their own laws and settle themselves.

They cannot be forced." All such relationships will work themselves out gradually, naturally, quietly, in the long course of the years: and the less they are talked about the better.

_Jim Crow Laws_

As for the Jim Crow laws in the South, many of them, at least, are at present necessary to avoid the danger of clashes between the ignorant of both race. They are the inevitable scaffolding of progress. As a matter of fact, the Negro has profited in one way by such laws. For the white man has thus driven the Negroes together, forced ability to find its outlet in racial leadership, and by his severity produced a spirit of self-reliance which would not otherwise have existed. Dr. Frissell of Hampton is always talking to his students of the "advantages of disadvantages."

As for laws against the intermarriage of the races, they do not prevent what they are designed to prevent: the mixing of white and coloured blood.

In many parts of the South, despite the existence of such laws, miscegenation, though decreasing rapidly, still continues. On the other hand, in the North, where Negroes and whites may marry, there is actually very little marriage and practically no concubinage. The solution of this question, too, lies far more in education than in law. As a matter of fact, the more education both races receive, the less the amalgamation. In the South, as in the North, the present tendency of the educated and prosperous Negroes is to build up a society of their own, entirely apart from and independent of white people. As I have shown in a former chapter, a white woman in the North who marries a Negro is decla.s.sed--ostracised by both races. The danger of amalgamation lies with ignorant and vicious people, black or white, not with educated and sensitive people.

As in the case of the Jim Crow laws, separate schools in the South are necessary, and in one way I believe them to be of great advantage to the Negroes themselves. In Northern cities like Indianapolis and New York, where there are no separation laws of any kind, separate schools have appeared, naturally and quietly, in districts where the Negro population is dense. That the pupils in each should be treated with exact justice in the matter of expenditures by the state is axiomatic. And the Negro boy should have the same unbounded opportunity for any sort of education he is capable of using as the white boy; nothing less will suffice.

One influence at present growing rapidly will have its profound effect on the separation laws. Though a tendency exists toward local segregation of Negroes to which I have already referred, there is also a counter-tendency toward a scattering of Negroes throughout the entire country. The white population in the South, now 20,000,000 against 9,000,000 Negroes, is increasing much more rapidly than the Negro population. The death-rate of Negroes is exceedingly high; and the sharper the conditions of compet.i.tion with white workers, the greater will probably be the limitation of increase of the more inefficient Negro population.

As for the predictions of "amalgamation," "a mongrel people," "black domination," and other bogies of prophecy, we must not, as I see it, give them any weight whatsoever. We cannot regulate our short lives by the fear of something far in the future which will probably never happen at all.

All we can do is to be right at this moment and let the future take care of itself; it will anyway. There is no other sane method of procedure.

Much as we may desire it, the future arrangement of this universe is not in our hands. As to the matter of "superiority" or "inferiority," it is not a subject of argument at all; nor can we keep or attain "superiority"

by laws or colour lines, or in any other way, except by being superior.

If we are right, absolutely right, in the eternal principles, we can rest in peace that the matter of our superiority will take care of itself.

_The Real Solution of the Negro Problem_

I remember asking a wise Southern man I met what, in his opinion, was the chief factor in the solution of the Negro problem.

"Time," he said, "and patience."

But time must be occupied with discipline and education--more and more education, not less education, education that will teach first of all the dignity of service not only for Negroes but for white men. The white man, South and North, needs it quite as much as the coloured man. And this is exactly the programme of the new Southern statesmanship of which I spoke in a former chapter. These wise Southerners have resolved to forget the discouragements and complexities of the Negro problem, forget even their disagreements, and go to work on present problems: the development of education and industry.

Whether we like it or not the whole nation (indeed, the whole world) is tied by unbreakable bonds to its Negroes, its Chinamen, its slum-dwellers, its thieves, its murderers, its prost.i.tutes. We cannot elevate ourselves by driving them back either with hatred or violence or neglect; but only by bringing them forward: by service.

For good comes to men, not as they work alone, but as they work together with that sympathy and understanding which is the only true Democracy. The Great Teacher never preached the flat equality of men, social or otherwise. He gave mankind a working principle by means of which, being so different, some white, some black, some yellow, some old, some young, some men, some women, some accomplished, some stupid--mankind could, after all, live together in harmony and develop itself to the utmost possibility. And that principle was the Golden Rule. It is the least sentimental, the most profoundly practical teaching known to men.