Following the color line : $b An account of Negro citizenship in the American democracy
History
Following the color line : $b An account of Negro citizenship in the American democracy
African Americans; United States -- Race relations
Two elements appear in every race problem: the first, race prejudice--the
repulsion of the unlike; second, economic or competitive jealousy. Both
operate, for example, in the case of the Irishman or Italian, but with the
Negro and Chinaman race prejudice is greater because the difference is
greater. The difficulty of the Negro in this country is the colour of his
skin, the symbol of his difference. In China the difficulty of the white
trader is his whiteness, his difference. Race lines, in short, are drawn
by white men, not because the other race is inferior (the Japanese and
Chinese are in many ways our superiors), nor because of criminality
(certain classes of foreigners are more criminal in our large cities than
the Negroes), nor because of laziness, but because of discernible physical
differences--black skin, almond eyes, pigtails, hook noses, a peculiar
bodily odour, or small stature. That dislike of a different people is more
or less instinctive in all men.
A tendency has existed on the part of Northern students who have no
first-hand knowledge of the masses of Negroes to underestimate the force
of race repulsion; on the other hand, the Southern student who is
confronted with the Negroes themselves is likely to overestimate racial
repulsion and underestimate economic competition as a cause of the
difficulty. The profoundest question, indeed, is to decide how much of the
so-called problem is due to race repulsion and how much to economic
competition.
This leads us to the most sinister phase of the race problem. As I have
shown, we have the two elements of conflict: instinctive race repulsion
and competitive jealousy. What is easier for the race in power, the white
race in this country (the yellow race in Asia) than to play upon race
instinct in order to serve selfish ends? How shrewdly the labour union,
whether in San Francisco or Atlanta, seizes upon that race hatred to keep
the black or yellow man out of the union and thereby control all the work
for its members! Race prejudice played upon becomes a tool in clinching
the power of the labour monopoly.
How the politician in the South excites race hatred in order that he may
be elected to office! Vardaman governed because he could make men hate one
another more bitterly than his opponent. The Rev. Thomas Dixon has
appealed in his books and plays to the same passion.
In several places in this country Negroes have been driven out by
mobs--not because they were criminal, or because they were bad citizens,
but because they were going into the grocery and drug business, they were
becoming doctors, dentists, and the like, and taking away the trade of
their white competitors. So the stores and restaurants of highly
efficient Japanese were wrecked in San Francisco.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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