Half a Man: The Status of the Negro in New YorkOvington, Mary White
History
Half a Man: The Status of the Negro in New York
Ovington, Mary White
African Americans -- New York (State) -- New York
Looking upon the great population of the city, its varied races and
nationalities, I confess that his outlook to me begins to be bright. New
York is still to a quite remarkable extent dominated socially by its old
American stock, its Dutch and Anglo-Saxon element. Few things strike the
foreign visitor so forcibly as that despite its enormous European
population, American society is homogeneous. But this is not likely to
continue for very long. When the present demand for exhausting
self-supporting work becomes less insistent, we shall feel in a deeper,
more vital way the influence of our vast foreign life. With a million
Jews and nearly a million Latin people, we cannot for long be held in
the provincialism of to-day. I suspect that to many Europeans New York
seems still a great overgrown village in "a nation of villagers,"
pronouncing with narrow, dogmatic assurance upon the deep unsolved
problems of life. But in the future it may take on a larger, more
cosmopolitan spirit. Its Italians may bring a finer feeling for beauty
and wholesome gayety, its Jews may continue to add great intellectual
achievements, and its people of African descent, perhaps always few in
number, may show with happy spontaneity their best and highest gifts. If
New York really becomes a cosmopolitan city, let us believe the Negro
will bring to it his highest genius and will walk through it simply,
quietly, unnoticed, a man among men.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Lucy Pratt, "Ezekiel."
[2] "The world of modern intellectual life is in reality a white man's
world. Few women and perhaps no blacks have entered this world in the
fullest sense. To enter it in the fullest sense would be to be in it at
every moment from the time of birth to the time of death, and to absorb
it unconsciously and consciously, as the child absorbs language. When
something like this happens we shall be in a position to judge of the
mental efficiency of women and the lower races. At present we seem
justified in inferring that the differences in mental expression between
the higher and lower races and between men and women are no greater than
they should be in view of the existing differences in opportunity." W.
I. Thomas, "Sex and Society," p. 312.
[3] Note especially the stories of Alice MacGowan and Grace MacGowan
Cooke, and the poems of Rosalie M. Jonas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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