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
Now if we are going to do this, let us be fair; let us try as much as
possible to dismiss prejudice, and to look at the Ezekiels entering our
school of life, with the same impartiality and the same understanding
sympathy with which we look upon our own race. And if we are to place
them side by side with the whites, let us be impartial, not cheating
them out of their hard-earned credits, or condemning them with undue
severity. Let us try, if we can, to be just.
When we begin to make this effort to judge fairly our colored world, we
need to remember especially two things: First, that we cannot yet
measure with any accuracy the capability of the colored man in the
United States, because he has not yet been given the opportunity to show
his capability. If we deny full expression to a race, if we restrict its
education, stifle its intellectual and æsthetic impulses, we make it
impossible fairly to gauge its ability. Under these circumstances to
measure its achievements with the more favored white race is
unreasonable and unjust, as unreasonable as to measure against a man's
a disfranchised woman's capabilities in directing the affairs of a
state.[2]
The second thing is difficult for us to remember, difficult for us at
first to believe; that we, dominant, ruling Americans, may not be the
persons best fitted to judge the Negro. We feel confident that we are,
since we have known him so long and are so familiar with his
peculiarities; but in moments of earnest reflection may it not occur to
us that we have not the desire or the imagination to enter into the life
emotions of others? "We are the intellect and virtue of the airth, the
cream of human natur', and the flower of moral force," Hannibal Chollup
still says, and glowers at the stranger who dares to suggest a different
standard from his own. Hannibal Chollup and his ilk are ill-fitted to
measure the refinements of feeling, the differences in ideals among
people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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