With reference also to the question of the "viability" and longevity of
hybrids, mulattoes, etc., science protests against the fallacy which
the new pro-slavery apostles advocate. Facts confirm the deductions
of genuine science, and explode the fallacies of its counterfeit. The
Dominican Republic is almost entirely composed of a mulatto population,
which is now in its second or third generation, if not older. Neither
are these mulattoes dying out, but they are increasing by and
within themselves. No human white stallions are imported there from
slave-breeding regions to correct or keep up the breed.
If, however, there should still linger a presumption of the superiority
of the white over the black man, it must speedily vanish when the
arguments of the militant upholders of slavery--whether they be in
senatorial togas, in priestly robes, or in printer's ink--are subjected
to the analysis of impartial philosophy or common logic. A spurious and
depraved civilization is far more dangerous and degrading to society,
and more truly evidences positive mental inferiority, than does the
absence of civilization or the primitive savage condition. And this is
the more true when the subjects of such a spurious civilization have
within reach the elements of a genuine moral and social culture, but at
the same time spurn and depreciate them all. Such persons, whatever may
be their conventional position or ethnic descent, whatever the color
of their skin, the form of their skull, or the nature of their hair,
are singly and collectively inferior to the uncultivated and oppressed
and hence degraded negro; while in respect of justice, manhood, and all
that is ennobling, they make no approach to the millions of industrious
and intelligent farmers and free yeomanry, artisans, and mechanics of
the free states, still less with the higher manifestations of these
qualities in great and generous minds.
Neither in the Mosaic record, therefore, nor the native sense of
morality, still less in science, can any support be found for the
fallacies propounded by the apostles of American slavery. Science,
just and elevated in its intrinsic nature, deduces conclusions and
establishes laws with sublime impartiality, extenuating naught,
and setting down naught in malice. The normal character of every
science, always and forever, is _emancipatory_. Science emancipates
the mind from prejudices, falsehoods, and superstitions, and from the
tyranny exercised over man by the elements and forces of nature, as
well as from the far more malignant forces of social oppression. It
is doubtless this divine character of true science which makes it so
repulsive to the apostles of human degradation.
FOOTNOTES:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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