The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United StatesDelany, Martin Robison
History
The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States
Delany, Martin Robison
African Americans
In our own country, the United States, there are _three million five
hundred thousand slaves_; and we, the nominally free colored people, are
_six hundred thousand_ in number; estimating one-sixth to be men, we
have _one hundred thousand_ able bodied freemen, which will make a
powerful auxiliary in any country to which we may become adopted--an
ally not to be despised by any power on earth. We love our country,
dearly love her, but she don't love us--she despises us, and bids us
begone, driving us from her embraces; but we shall not go where she
desires us; but when we do go, whatever love we have for her, we shall
love the country none the less that receives us as her adopted children.
For the want of business habits and training, our energies have become
paralyzed; our young men never think of business, any more than if they
were so many bondmen, without the right to pursue any calling they may
think most advisable. With our people in this country, dress and good
appearances have been made the only test of gentleman and ladyship, and
that vocation which offers the best opportunity to dress and appear
well, has generally been preferred, however menial and degrading, by our
young people, without even, in the majority of cases, an effort to do
better; indeed, in many instances, refusing situations equally
lucrative, and superior in position; but which would not allow as much
display of dress and personal appearance. This, if we ever expect to
rise, must be discarded from among us, and a high and respectable
position assumed.
One of our great temporal curses is our consummate poverty. We are the
poorest people, as a class, in the world of civilized mankind--abjectly,
miserably poor, no one scarcely being able to assist the other. To this,
of course, there are noble exceptions; but that which is common to, and
the very process by which white men exist, and succeed in life, is
unknown to colored men in general. In any and every considerable
community may be found, some one of our white fellow-citizens, who is
worth more than all the colored people in that community put together.
We consequently have little or no efficiency. We must have means to be
practically efficient in all the undertakings of life; and to obtain
them, it is necessary that we should be engaged in lucrative pursuits,
trades, and general business transactions. In order to be thus engaged,
it is necessary that we should occupy positions that afford the
facilities for such pursuits. To compete now with the mighty odds of
wealth, social and religious preferences, and political influences of
this country, at this advanced stage of its national existence, we never
may expect. A new country, and new beginning, is the only true,
rational, politic remedy for our disadvantageous position; and that
country we have already pointed out, with triple golden advantages, all
things considered, to that of any country to which it has been the
province of man to embark.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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