The Black Man's Place in South AfricaNielsen, Peter, active 1922-1937
History
The Black Man's Place in South Africa
Nielsen, Peter, active 1922-1937
Black people -- South Africa
Now if I am right in thinking that this racial feeling is engendered
instinctively by physical dissimilarity only then we may not expect it
to be removed or even lessened by the increased and general advancement
of the Natives, for although we may hope that the whites will gradually
come to recognise the abstract justice of the civilised Natives' claim
to full racial equality we must, at the same time, remember that the
increasing competition of the black man in every walk of life is bound
to bring into play and accentuate the natural race prejudice of the
white man whereby the tolerance and good feeling that might otherwise
result from a growing recognition of the civilised Natives' mental and
moral worth will be more than negatived. The present state of affairs in
the Southern States of America is a warning against easy optimism in
this respect. We must expect clashing and growing ill-will rather than
social serenity to be the outcome of a continued policy of drift.
To condemn the wrong of repression would to-day be like preaching to the
converted. Most people now admit that the Africans are entitled, no less
than the Europeans, to develop themselves as far and as fully as they
can, but the question remains how they can be allowed to do so without
intensifying present antipathy on both sides. Parallelism is a word that
has been used a great deal of late to signify an attitude of mind, as I
take it, rather than a definite policy or plan of action, through which
it is hoped that separate scope for civilised activity and development
may be given to the Natives on lines parallel to those along which the
whites pursue their separate course, but without any forced territorial
separation of the two people. Metaphor of this kind is undoubtedly
useful to the political speaker in that it enables him to be apt without
being exact, and thereby frees him from the possibility of being pinned
down to a stated position, but in serious discussion exactness rather
than aptness is desired, and to the thinking man the figure of speech,
by which the notion of two lines running always parallel without meeting
is applied to the course of development of two races living together in
one country, is not convincing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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