Social sciences; United States -- Politics and government -- 1901-1909
¶The problem is so to adjust the relations between two races of
different ethical type that the rights of neither be abridged nor
jeopardized; that the backward race be trained so that it may enter into
the possession of true freedom while the forward race is enabled to
preserve unharmed the high civilization wrought out by its forefathers.
The working out of this problem must necessarily be slow; it is not
possible in offhand fashion to obtain or to confer the priceless boon of
freedom, industrial efficiency, political capacity, and domestic
morality. Nor is it only necessary to train the colored man; it is quite
as necessary to train the white man, for on his shoulders rest a well
nigh unparalleled sociological responsibility. It is a problem demanding
the best thought; the utmost patience, the most earnest effort, the
broadest charity, of the statesman, the student, the philanthropist; of
the leaders of thought in every department of our national life. The
Church can be a most important factor in solving it aright. But above
all else we need for its successful solution the sober, kindly,
steadfast, unselfish performance of duty by the average plain citizen in
his every-day dealings with his fellows.
¶The ideal of elemental justice meted out to every man is the ideal we
should keep ever before us. It will be many a long day before we attain
to it and unless we show not only devotion to it, but also wisdom and
self-restraint in the exhibition of that devotion, we shall defer the
time for its realization still further. In striving to attain to so much
of it as concerns dealing with men of different colors, we must remember
two things.
¶In the first place it is true of the colored man, as it is true of the
white man, that in the long run his fate must depend far more upon his
own effort than upon the efforts of any outside friend. Every vicious,
venal, or ignorant colored man is an even greater foe to his own race
than to the community as a whole. The colored man’s self-respect
entitles him to do that share in the political work of the country which
is warranted by his individual ability and integrity and the position he
has won for himself. But the prime requisite of the race is moral and
industrial uplifting.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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