“So, what can we do? All we have got to do in this matter is to
acknowledge them laws and submit to ’em; ignorin’ ’em or walkin’ by
’em with our heads up in the air a pretendin’ we don’t see ’em don’t
amount to anything at all, only we are liable to stumble and fall down
ourselves.
“And one of these laws is the inherient difference between the black
and the white races.
“There is no use a arguin’ on it and a sayin’ that it is onreasonable,
and it ort to be overcome, etc.
“Who sez it is reasonable? I don’t. It would be awful convenient
sometimes if water would run up hill; but it won’t. And I have to
accept the plain fact and lug the water up hill in a pail. For me to
stand on top of the hill and holler for it to come up would be foolish.
I might yell all my life, and couldn’t start a drop up hill, and my
lungs would be tired out for nuthin’. And you might think sometimes
that a good old childless cat might adopt a mouse; but she won’t, only
in one way. Mebby it hain’t Christian in her, but she wuz made that
way. If she accepts it at all, it will be inside of her. I can’t help
it, and she can’t. She wuz made that way before the mountains wuz
formed, like as not.
“Religion can do much, but it never has made black white or put the
nater of a eagle into a snail, or the virtues of a angel under the hide
of a bear.
“And the spellin’ book is extremely desirable and good, and highly
worthy, and to be praised. But then there are things too strong for
education to overcome. For instance, to draw up the simely that I have
drawed before—it hain’t poetick, but one which is familiar to men or
wimmen: Education can’t put a number seven foot into a number three
shoe.
“No, it can’t be did, and education may orate to them big toes in Greek
or Latin, and it may read essays to ’em in words of seven or eight
syllables, and quote all the poets to ’em, livin’ or dead, but it
hain’t a goin’ to quell ’em down, and make ’em any smaller. It hain’t a
goin’ to get ’em into that shoe.
“And when folks talk too much about the sudden miracles that education
and Christian teachin’ is going to do to the black race, and seem to
expect ’em to become perfect all to once, I want to ask ’em why it
hain’t made our own race perfect?
“The white race has had the benefit of Christianity and Education for
hundreds of years, and all the means of culture, and it hain’t hendered
’em from bein’ as mean as the Old Harry to the black man, and they
despise and wrong the negro jest as much to-day as if St. Paul had
never preached or Jesus had not died for the world.”
(I meant some on ’em—I didn’t mean all; but I wuz kinder carried away
by my own eloquence.)
“Now,” sez I, “it is a settled thing, and can’t be got round, this
inherient, instinctive difference between the black and white races—if
they would, they never _can_ amalgamate and be a united people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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