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
So much for the males of the dominant race. Now for those of the subject
race. How do they conduct themselves at this morally chaotic
meeting-place of the two races? What effect does this sexual freedom,
spawned under such conditions, produce on their life, on their actions?
Like the men of the upper race, they, too, live in a monogamous country.
But unlike their male rivals, these men of the under-world are not free
to seek their mates from the women of both races. The law restricts
them, public opinion restricts them, the men of the dominant race
restrict them in this regard to the women of their own race. Around the
women of the dominant race, law, public opinion, the men of that race,
have erected a high wall which the men of the other race are forbidden
to climb. What do these men see in respect to themselves in view of this
triply-built wall? They see that while they share the women of their own
race with the men of the other race, that these same men enjoy exclusive
possession of their own women, thanks to the high wall, built by law, by
public opinion, and the strong arms of these self-same men. What do the
men of the under world? Do they struggle against this sexual supremacy
of the men of the upper world, or do they succumb to circumstances,
surrender unconditionally to the high wall? We shall presently see.
This racial inequality generates heat in masculine breasts in the under
world. And with this heat there ensues that fermentation of thought and
feeling which men call passion. Those submerged men begin to think
sullenly on the subject, they try to grasp the equities of the
situation. As thought spreads among them, feeling spreads among them
also. About their own women they see no fence, about the women of the
other race they see that high wall. They cannot think out to any
satisfactory conclusion the justice of that arrangement, cannot
understand why the women of the upper race should belong exclusively to
the men of that race, and why these self-same men should share jointly
with the men of the lower race the women of this race.
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