A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro: The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 — John Shaqi
A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro: The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1Miller, Kelly
Philosophy
A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro: The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1
Miller, Kelly
African Americans; Hoffman, Frederick L. (Frederick Ludwig), 1865-1946. Race traits and tendencies of the American Negro
The alleged culprit in such cases, especially if he be a colored man and
the victim a white woman, is almost certain to die without due process
of law. The native, savage furor of human nature asserts itself in the
presence of such dastardly outrages, and neither legal enactments nor
moral codes nor religious sanction can restrain it. The perpetrators
cannot be defended or pitied. It is a waste of sympathy to wail over the
deep damnation of their taking off. And yet we must remember that when
the two races are concerned rape has a larger definition than is set
down in the dictionaries. There can be no doubt that there have been
many lynchings chargeable to rape, when the true cause should be
designated by a different, though an ugly name.
Let us not forget, also, that not more than one-third of the lynchings
are even chargeable to rape. The causes include the whole catalogue of
offenses, serious and trifling, from the committal of murder to jostling
against a white man on the street. The attempt to show that lynching and
rape are coextensive is misleading and unjust.
So the effort to show that rapeful assaults are due to "race traits"
can, I think, be clearly disproved. In a pamphlet which is certainly
not flattering to the Negro, a learned medical authority tells us: "I
might remark in passing that, notwithstanding the horrible crimes
perpetrated under the influence of the _furor sexualis_ by the Negro, I
believe that he compares quite favorably as regards sexual
impulses--taking all abnormalities into consideration--with the white
race. The more I see of white men in so-called refined society, the more
contempt have I for quite a large proportion of male humanity."[54]
To summarize the points of the argument, showing that rape is not
peculiarly characteristic of the Negro:
1. Rape has been practiced among all races and nations.
2. The committal of rape by white men is by no means an infrequent
occurrence. Two instances of white men committing heinous assaults upon
white children occurred in Washington during the preparation of this
article.
3. In Africa rape is so severely punished that it is comparatively
unknown.
4. In the British Islands and in South America where the Negroes live in
greatest relative abundance, the crime is unheard of.
5. When the care and safety of the white women of the South were
entrusted to the keeping of the slaves, they returned inviolable all
that had been entrusted to their hands.
6. Of the hundreds of lady missionaries of the North who have trusted
their lives and virtue to the emancipated race whom they came to uplift,
not a single case of violation has been reported to their friends at the
North.
SOCIAL MORALITY.
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