In the meantime, all that we can do is to look about us and pick up
hints where we can. In places like Massachusetts, where Negroes are
allowed to go to college and are given a chance to show what they can
do, they have not ousted the white man, but many of them have certainly
won his respect, and one finds charming and cultured men among them, who
show no signs of prematurely closed up skulls. And one after another we
see the races which have been held down as being inferior, developing
leadership and organization and power of moral resistance. The Irish are
showing themselves today one of the most vigorous and high-spirited of
all races. The Hindus are developing a movement which in the long run
may prove more powerful than the white man's gold and steel. The
Egyptians, the Persians, the Filipinos, the Koreans, are all devising
ways to break the power of capitalist newspaper censorship. How sad that
the subject races of the world have to get their education through
hatred of their teachers, instead of through love!
Of course, these rebel leaders are men who have absorbed the white man's
culture, at least in part; practically always they are of the younger
generation, which has been to the white man's schools. But this is the
very answer we have been seeking--as to whether the race is permanently
inferior, or merely immature and in need of training. It is not only
among the brown and black and yellow races that progress depends upon
the young generations; that is a universal fact of life.
In the course of this argument we shall assume that the Christian or
democratic theory has the weight of probability on its side, and that
nature has not created any permanently and necessarily inferior race or
class. We shall assume that the heritage of culture is a common
heritage, open to all our species. We shall not go so far as the
statement which Jefferson wrote into the Declaration of Independence,
that "all men are created free and equal"; but we shall assert that they
are created "with certain inalienable rights," and that among these is
the right to maintain their lives and to strive for liberty and
happiness. Also, we shall say that there will never be peace or order in
the world until they have found liberty, and recognition of their right
to happiness.
CHAPTER LI
RULING CLASSES
(Deals with authority in human society, how it is obtained, and
what sanction it can claim.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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