For my own part I am disposed to discount all adverse judgments and
all statements of insurmountable differences between race and race.
I talk upon racial qualities to all men who have had opportunities
of close observation, and I find that their insistence upon these
differences is usually in inverse proportion to their intelligence.
It may be the chance of my encounters, but that is my clear
impression. Common sailors will generalise in the profoundest way
about Irishmen, and Scotchmen, and Yankees, and Nova Scotians, and
"Dutchies," until one might think one talked of different species of
animal, but the educated explorer flings clear of all these
delusions. To him men present themselves individualised, and if they
classify it is by some skin-deep accident of tint, some trick of the
tongue, or habit of gesture, or such-like superficiality. And after
all there exists to-day available one kind at least of unbiassed
anthropological evidence. There are photographs. Let the reader turn
over the pages of some such copiously illustrated work as The Living
Races of Mankind, [Footnote: The Living Races of Mankind, by H. N.
Hutchinson, J. W. Gregory, and R. Lydekker. (Hutchinson.)] and look
into the eyes of one alien face after another. Are they not very
like the people one knows? For the most part, one finds it hard to
believe that, with a common language and common social traditions,
one would not get on very well with these people. Here or there is
a brutish or evil face, but you can find as brutish and evil in
the Strand on any afternoon. There are differences no doubt, but
fundamental incompatibilities--no! And very many of them send out
a ray of special resemblance and remind one more strongly of this
friend or that, than they do of their own kind. One notes with
surprise that one's good friend and neighbour X and an anonymous
naked Gold Coast negro belong to one type, as distinguished from
one's dear friend Y and a beaming individual from Somaliland, who
as certainly belong to another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account