The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His AchievementsBrown, William Wells
History
The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements
Brown, William Wells
African Americans -- Biography
"Other countries are held out as homes for us. Why is this? Why is it
that the people from all other countries are invited to come here, and
we are asked to go away? Is it to make room for the refuse population
of Europe? Or why is it that the white people of this country desire
to get rid of us? Does any one pretend to deny that this is _our_
country? or that much of its wealth and prosperity is the result of the
labor of _our_ hands? or that our blood and bones have crimsoned and
whitened every battle-field from Maine to Louisiana? Why this desire to
get rid of us? Can it be possible that because the nation has robbed
us for more than two centuries, and now finds that she can do it no
longer and preserve a good character among the nations, she, out of
hatred, wishes to banish, because she cannot continue to rob, us? Or
why is it? I will tell you. The free people of color have succeeded in
spite of every thing; and we are to-day a living refutation of that
shameless assertion that we cannot take care of ourselves. Abject as
our condition has been, our whole lives prove us to be superior to the
influences that have been brought to bear upon us to crush us. This
cannot be said of your race when it was oppressed and enslaved. Another
reason is, this nation has wronged us; therefore many hate us. The
Spanish proverb is, 'Since I have wronged you I have never liked you.'
This is true of every class of people. When a man wrongs another, he
not only hates him, but tries to make others dislike him. Unnatural as
this may appear, it is nevertheless true. You may help a man during his
lifetime, and he will speak well of you; but your first refusal will
incur his displeasure, and show you his ingratitude. When he has got
all he can from you, he has no further use for you. When the orange is
squeezed, we throw it aside. The black man is a good fellow while he is
a slave, and toils for nothing; but the moment he claims his own flesh
and blood and bones, he is a most obnoxious creature, and there is a
proposition to get rid of him. He is happy while he remains a poor,
degraded, ignorant slave, without even the right to his own offspring.
While in this condition the master can ride in the same carriage, sleep
in the same bed, and nurse from the same bosom. But give this slave
the right to use his own legs, his hands, his body, and his mind, and
this happy and desirable creature is instantly transformed into a most
loathsome wretch, fit only to be colonized somewhere near the mountains
of the moon, or eternally banished from civilized beings! You must
not lose sight of the fact it is the emancipated slave and the free
colored man that it is proposed to remove--not the slave. This country
is perfectly adapted to negro slavery; it is the free blacks that the
air is not good for! What an idea! a country good for slavery and not
good for freedom! This monstrous idea would be scorned by even a Fejee
Islander."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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