Half a Man: The Status of the Negro in New York — John Shaqi
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
Our table shows us that which we have already noted, the high percentage
of improper guardianship among the Negroes and the grave number of
depraved Negro girls. For the sins of petit larceny, grand larceny, and
burglary, putting the three together, the colored child shows a slightly
smaller percentage than the East Side white, a noticeably smaller
percentage than the total number of children. The sin of theft is often
swiftly attributed to a black face, but this percentage indicates that
the colored child has no "innate tendency" to steal. Ten per cent of the
arrests among the East Side children are for unlicensed peddling and
violation of the labor law, but no little Negro boys plunge into the
business world before their time. They have no keen commercial sense to
lead them to undertake transactions on their own account, and they are
not desired by purchasers of boy labor in the city.
The most important heading, numerically, is that of mischief, and here
the Negro falls far behind the Eastsider, behind the average for the
whole. While depravity among the girls and improper guardianship are the
race's most serious defects, as shown by the arrests among its children
in New York, tractability and a decent regard for law are among its
merits. The colored child, especially if he is in a segregated
neighborhood, is not greatly inclined to mischief. My own experience has
shown me that life in a tenement on San Juan Hill is devoid of the
ingenious, exasperating deviltry of an Irish or German-American
neighborhood. No daily summons calls one to the door only to hear wildly
scurrying footsteps on the stairs. Mail boxes are left solely for the
postman's use, and hallways are not defaced by obscene writing. There is
plenty of crap shooting, rarely interfered with by the police, but there
is little impertinent annoyance or destructiveness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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