Papers of the American Negro Academy. (The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers, No. 18-19.) — John Shaqi
Papers of the American Negro Academy. (The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers, No. 18-19.)Grimké, Archibald Henry
History
Papers of the American Negro Academy. (The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers, No. 18-19.)
Grimké, Archibald Henry
African Americans -- Congresses
These men build homes in the upper world where are installed their
wives, who beget them children in lawful wedlock; they likewise build
homes in the lower world, where are installed their concubines, who
beget them children in unlawful wedlock. The wives move, have their
being in the upper world and sustain to their husbands certain
well-defined rights and relations, social and legal. The children of
this union sustain to those fathers equally clear and definite rights
and relations in the eye of the law, in the eye of society. The law,
society, imposes on them, these husbands and fathers, certain
well-defined duties and obligations in respect to these children, these
wives, which may not be evaded or violated with impunity. These men
cannot therefore disown or desert their wives and children at will.
Whereas, such is not the case, is not the situation, in respect to the
unlawful wives hidden away in a corner of the under-world, or of that of
the children begotten to those men by these unlawful wives, but quite
the contrary. For them the law, society, does not intervene, does not
establish any binding relations, any reciprocal rights between those
women and children and the men, any more than if the men and the women
were living together in a state of nature and having children born to
them in such a state, where the will of the natural man is law, where
his sexual passion measures exactly the extent and the duration of his
duties and obligations in respect to his offspring and the mother of
them. When he grows weary of the mother he goes elsewhere, and forgets
that he ever had children by her.
This is the case, is the situation, in the under-world of the under
race. For down there, there is no law, no public opinion, to curb the
gratification of the sexual instinct of the men of the upper world, such
as exists and operates so effectively to curb those instincts in that
upper world. In the upper world these men may have but one wife each,
but in the lower one they may have as many concubines as they like, and
a different set of children by each concubine. They may have these women
and children in succession, or they may have them at the same time. For
there is in that under-world no law, no effective power to say to those
men, to their lust of the flesh: "Thus far and no farther." In the upper
world they are members of a civilized society, amenable to its codes of
law and morals; in the lower one, they are merely male animals
struggling with other male animals for the possession of the females. On
the dim stage of the under-world this is the one part that they play. In
this one sensual role they make their entrances and their exits. They
may have in the upper world achieved distinction along other lines of
human endeavor, but in the lower one, they achieve the single
distinction of being successful male animals in pursuit of the females.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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