African Americans; United States -- Race relations
Of course the inheritance of evil is not the same in all classes of
society. Everyone inherits something from the baleful institution,
but not everyone the same. The mind of the coarse White is crude
and terrible, and the mind of the refined is certainly different.
One should perhaps be more lenient to the poor, and more urgent in
criticism of the rich. For all stand together, and the disease is one
not merely of individuals, but of the whole. The rich and cultured
condone the brutality of the masses because they have a point of view
which is incompatible with theirs.
Those whose ancestors treated the slaves well, claim to be immune from
all criticism. There were in the old days many kind and considerate
masters to whom the Negroes were wonderfully attached. But even these
masters suffered from the institution of slavery, as any rich man
suffers from dependence on retainers and flunkeys and servants whom
he practically owns, as all suffer who are divorced from the reality
of earning their living as equals with their neighbors. And their
children, brought up amidst the submissive servility of the Negroes,
grew to be little monarchs or chiefs, and always to expect other people
to do things for them. Where ordinary white children learn to ask and
say “please,” they learned to order and command and to threaten with
punishment. The firm lip of the educated Southerner has an expression
which is entirely military. In the army, one asks for nothing of
inferiors except courage on the day of battle. All is ordered. And the
power to order and to be obeyed rapidly changes the expression of the
features. It has changed the physiognomy of the aristocracy in the
Southern section of the United States. You can classify all faces into
those who say “please” and those who do not, and the children of the
slave owners are mostly in the second category. Unqualified mastership;
indifference to dirt and misery in the servant class; callous disregard
of others’ pain, or pleasure taken in their pain; slaves said to be
animals and not human beings, and the superadded sin of bestiality,
using a lower caste to satiate coarse lusts which the upper caste could
not satisfy; the buying and selling of creatures who could otherwise
only belong to God—all these terrible sins or sinful conditions are
visited on the third and fourth generation of those who hate, though
as must always be said, God’s mercy is shown to thousands of them that
love Him and keep His eternal commandments.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account