The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn — John Shaqi
The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the UnbornSmith, William Benjamin
History
The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn
Smith, William Benjamin
African Americans
There remain yet certain important political and economical and even
juridical aspects of the subject, concerning which the writer has not
neglected to gather relevant material of evidence; but any adequate
discussion would carry the reader too far afield and would mar the
unity of the work as it now stands. Accordingly these aspects are left
unregarded.
The writer fancies one may forecast the only reply likely to be brought
forward under even a thin guise of plausibility. It will be said, as it
is said, that the much-dreaded contamination of blood is the merest
bugaboo. But nay! it is a tremendous and instant peril, against which
eternal vigilance is the only safeguard, in whose presence it is vain
and fatuous to cry "peace, peace" when there is no peace, a peril whose
menace is sharpened by well-meant efforts at humanity and generosity,
by seemingly just demands for social equality masquerading as "equal
opportunity." The one adequate definition of this "equal opportunity"
has been bravely given by that most able and eloquent Negroid, Prof.
William H. Councill: "Will the White man permit the Negro to have an
equal part in the industrial, political, social and civil advantages of
the United States? This, as I understand it, is the problem." All this
is quite beyond question to the mind that cherishes no illusions and
insistently beholds things as they are. Neither is it less sure that
even the Southern conscience needs quickening at this vital point. The
writer has been appalled at the cool indifference with which
amalgamation is contemplated as necessary and inevitable by certain
highly intelligent philanthropists in the Southland. The matter is
delicate and difficult to argue, and in the body of the book it has
perhaps been stressed too lightly; but the danger signals are clearly
discernible, even as they were to Prof. E. D. Cope, and it is madness
not to heed them. If the race barrier be removed, and the individual
standard of personal excellence be established, the twilight of this
century will gather upon a nation hopelessly sinking in the mire of
Mongrelism.
It can hardly be hoped that any reader will be satisfied with the
glimpse here disclosed of the future. Certainly not the Negro, nor his
apologists; nor even such as sympathize most fully with the writer. The
solemn secular processes, to which the solution of the problem is
relegated, are so very leisurely in their working, closing down upon
their final result with the deliberation of a glacier, or like some
slowly convergent infinite series. But Nature is once for all thus
leaden-footed, and it is extremely difficult to quicken her pace.
We have bestowed merely a glance upon the scheme of Deportation, which
is alas! not now a question of practical statesmanship, though it may
indeed become one sooner than we think.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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