The political architecture of hate: When prejudice becomes codified ideology

“ Political prejudice is not so hard to overcome as race prejudice and race prejudice is not so deep-seated as religious prejudice; but prejudice of any kind, whether it be personal, political, race, or religious, seriously interferes with the progress of truth. ”

“ In a word, humanity, in all its phases, has been debased. Loud is the cry and wailing of orphans, and bitter the lamentations of mothers which are echoed by the skies.
The prime cause for all these happenings is racial, national, religious, and political prejudice, and the root of all this prejudice lies in outworn and deepseated traditions, be they religious, racial, national, or political. So long as these traditions remain, the foundation of human edifice is insecure, and mankind itself is exposed to continuous peril. ”

“ A little more or less pigment in the skin, the shape of a nose or the slant of the eyes, produce in the average American that most primitive of antagonisms—race prejudice.
Being a primitive instinct, it defies reason, the commandments of religion and the dictates of humanity. In fact, it often becomes irrational, irreligious and inhuman. ”

“ God has not created men that they should destroy one another. All races, tribes, sects and classes share equally in the bounty of their Heavenly Father.
The only real difference lies in the degree of faithfulness, of obedience to the laws of God. There are some who are as lighted torches; there are others who shine as stars in the sky of humanity.
The lovers of mankind, these are the superior men, of whatever nation, creed or color they may be. Equally mischievous with racial prejudice is political or patriotic prejudice. ”

“ Morals, religions, politics, get their following from surrounding influences and atmospheres, almost entirely; not from study, not from thinking. A man must and will have his own approval first of all, in each and every moment and circumstance of his life--even if he must repent of a self-approved act the moment after its commission, in order to get his self-approval again: but, speaking in general terms, a man’s self-approval in the large concerns of life has its source in the approval of the peoples about him, and not in a searching personal examination of the matter. ”

“ A creed is a collective thing, and even its sins are sociable. A prejudice is a private thing, and even its tolerance is misanthropic. So it is with our existing divisions. They keep out of each other’s way; the Tory paper and the Radical paper do not answer each other; they ignore each other. Genuine controversy, fair cut and thrust before a common audience, has become in our special epoch very rare. For the sincere controversialist is above all things a good listener. The really burning enthusiast never interrupts ”

“ From the standpoint here outlined, prejudice or its analogue is the starting-point, and our question becomes one of the determination of the steps of the process by which man mentally allied with himself certain portions of his environment to the exclusion of others. ”

“ There never was a time when the Republic needed your services more than if does to-day, in harmonizing the elements of its population, in encouraging a spirit of fraternity, of brotherhood. It is not the function of a patriot, of a lover of his country to array class against class, race against race; that is the role of the demagogue, the low panderer to passion and prejudice for selfish ends. This race friction ought to cease; and it will cease if you will do the right thing; if you will listen to reason and common sense. It is not the Negro that is keeping up the friction, but the white man. ”

“ The tendency is here, born of slavery and quickened to renewed life by the crazy imperialism of the day, to regard human beings as among the material resources of a land to be trained with an eye single to future dividends. Race-prejudices, which keep brown and black men in their "places," we are coming to regard as useful allies with such a theory, no matter how much they may dull the ambition and sicken the hearts of struggling human beings. ”

“ The continuity of physical traits and the limitation of the effects of environment to the individual only are now so thoroughly recognized by scientists that it is at most a question of time when the social consequences which result from such crossings will be generally understood by the public at large. As soon as the true bearing and import of the facts are appreciated by lawmakers a complete change in our political structure will inevitably occur and our present reliance on the influence of education will be superseded by a readjustment based on racial values. ”

“ Race prejudice, as we call the sentiments that support the racial taboos, is not, in America at least, an obscure phenomenon. But no one has yet succeeded in making it wholly intelligible. It is evident that there is in race prejudice, as distinguished from class and caste prejudice, an instinctive factor based on the fear of the unfamiliar and the uncomprehended. Color, or any other racial mark that emphasizes physical differences, becomes the symbol of moral divergences which perhaps do not exist. ”

“ We hate people because we fear them, because our interests, as we understand them at any rate, run counter to theirs. On the other hand, good will is founded in the long run upon co-operation. The extension of our so-called altruistic sentiments is made possible only by the organization of our otherwise conflicting interests and by the extension of the machinery of co-operation and social control.
Race prejudice may be regarded as a spontaneous, more or less instinctive, defense-reaction, the practical effect of which is to restrict free competition between races. ”

“ In race-prejudice we see the same tendency to exalt the self and the group at the expense of outsiders. The alien group is belittled by attaching contempt to its peculiarities and habits—its color, speech, dress, and all the signs of its personality. ”

“ The instinct to belittle outsiders is perhaps at the bottom of our delusion that the white race has one order of mind and the black and yellow races have another. But, while a prejudice—a matter of instinct and emotion—may well be at the beginning of an error of this kind, it could not sustain itself in the face of our logical habits unless reinforced by an error of the judgment. ”

“ First, that racial characteristics are largely determined by environment.
Second, that race prejudice is an artificial product of the mind, induced by various influences.
Third, that in the highest and lowest spheres of thought and activity, all races are alike.
Fourth, that every human being, no matter what his colour, race, faith or class, has a right to earn the respect of his neighbour and his community, by virtue of what he himself is.
Fifth, that the brotherhood of man will become an established fact as soon as each man determines to live like a brother in his relation to his fellows. ”

“ The standard explanation or excuse for race-prejudice is the theory of the inequality of racial stocks. However, for all their eagerness to bolster up a foregone conclusion, the race-patriots have not been able to prove by any sort of evidence, historical, biological, or psychological, that racial differences353 are not simply indications of unlikeness, rather than of inherent superiority or inferiority. ”

“ Ignorance is the bulwark of prejudice, and race prejudice is singularly dependent upon an ignorance which is, to be sure, sometimes willful but which more often is unintentional and accidental. It has come about, however, that the small minority who cherish their prejudices have had the power to make life increasingly hard for the black man. ”

“ A person who has during all time maintained the imposing position of spiritual head of four-fifths of the human race, and political head of the whole of it, must be granted the possession of executive abilities of the loftiest order. In his large presence the other popes and politicians shrink to midges for the microscope. I would like to see him. I would rather see him and shake him by the tail than any other member of the European Concert. In the present paper I shall allow myself to use the word Jew as if it stood for both religion and race. ”

“ Race is not a cause, but an effect. It is not biology which explains politics, it is politics which dominate biology. It is not the physical which explains the moral, it is the moral which produces the physical. It is not the racial type which produces a racial belief and a racial community, it is the religion which produces the race. It is not the Hindu caste which produces the religion, [177] it is religion which produces the caste. Similarly, it is the religious and political conditions which have kept the Jew apart, and which have preserved the characteristics of the race. ”

“ Odysseus, from whose book I quote again, gives us the very curious fact that even race is not immutable, it changes like religion, with the political movement; it has become a question of political expediency. ”

“ After the 70’s, as the aliens became numerically powerful and began to demand political representation, movements based on religious prejudice were started from time to time, some of which came to temporary prominence, later to die an inglorious death; but all these movements which attempted to deprive aliens of their right of freedom to worship were calculated to bring economic discontent and to add to the measure of national disunion and unhappiness. ”

“ Race feeling may be called prejudice by those whose careers are cramped by it but it is a natural antipathy which serves to maintain the purity of type. The unfortunate fact that nearly all species of men interbreed freely leaves us no choice in the matter. Races must be kept apart by artificial devices of this sort or they ultimately amalgamate and in the offspring the more generalized or lower type prevails. ”

“ Shelby rasped a laugh.
"I know something of the spirit of laws."
"I doubt not. You've helped make enough disreputable legislation to qualify an expert."
"What right has a dilettante like you to sit in judgment?" he demanded, the other's barb rankling none the less that he had invited it. "You have no notion of just political expediency; no notion even of politics with which you meddle. Politics isn't book knowledge; it's flesh and blood fact. Party fealty means nothing to you. You've not voted a straight ticket twice in your life."
"I know where that shoe pinches," retorted Graves. ”

“ For nearly a half century white and colored clerks have worked side by side, and nothing was thought of it; but now through this insane desire to humiliate a race, to impress it more and more with its inferiority, it is now proposed to make it a crime, not under laws enacted by Negro-hating Southern legislatures, but by the National Government itself, which is supposed to represent all the people, and to represent equality of rights for all the people. That prejudice is increasing ”

“ If one race enjoys privileges denied to the other, it is likely to abuse its power to the prejudice of the Backward people, placing them, it may be, under civil as well as political disabilities, or imposing heavier taxes upon them, or refusing them their fair share of benefits from the public revenue. ”

“ That to leave the Negro helpless and without a ballot to-day is to leave him, not to the guidance of the best, but rather to the exploitation and debauchment of the worst; that this is no truer of the South than of the North,—of the North than of Europe: in any land, in any country under modern free competition, to lay any class of weak and despised people, be they white, black, or blue, at the political mercy of their stronger, richer, and more resourceful fellows, is a temptation which human nature seldom has withstood and seldom will withstand. ”

“ Every enactment that has found its way to the statutory documents of the Southern States, where the rights and privileges of the two races are involved, shows race prejudice; then this thing is getting no better, but worse. As the Negro rises from the darkness of the past and [Pg 47] approximates the American standard of civilization, the feeling against him becomes more intense, bitter and decisive, which does not speak well for the American civilization.
No Negro, however highly accomplished, can be brought into the social fabric. ”

“ The race is not likely to be less insistent in the future in demanding its rights than it is now at the end of the first half century of growth, of development.
IV. At the end of these fifty years of freedom, in spite of the remarkable progress that we have made along all lines, we find race prejudice increasing instead of diminishing. The remarkable record of progress that we have made has had no appreciable influence, so far as appears on the surface, in lessening the feeling of hostility to us. Race prejudice is stronger, is more bitter, more aggressive to-day than ever before. ”

“ The outbreaks of race prejudice in recent years are the surest evidence of the Negro's progress. No effort is required to keep down a race which manifests no desire nor ability to rise; but with each new forward movement of the colored race it is brought into contact with the whites at some fresh point, which evokes a new manifestation of prejudice until custom has adjusted things to the new condition. When all Negroes were poor and ignorant they could be denied their rights with impunity. ”

“ When this status is accepted by the subject people, as is the case where the caste or slavery systems become fully established, [Pg 621] racial competition ceases and racial animosity tends to disappear. That is the explanation of the intimate and friendly relations which so often existed in slavery between master and servant. It is for this reason that we hear it said today that the Negro is all right in his place. In his place he is a convenience and not a competitor. Each race being in its place, no obstacle to racial co-operation exists. ”

“ I am convinced myself that there is no more evil thing in this present world than Race Prejudice; none at all. I write deliberately—it is the worst single thing in life now. It justifies and holds together more baseness, cruelty and abomination than any other sort of error in the world. Through its body runs the black blood of coarse lust, suspicion, jealousy and persecution and all the darkest poisons of the human soul. ”

“ But, assuming that the present anti-Negro legislation is but a temporary reaction, then the steady progress of the colored race in wealth and culture and social efficiency will, in the course of time, materially soften the asperities of racial prejudice and permit them to approach the whites more closely, until, in time, the prejudice against intermarriage shall have been overcome by other considerations. ”

“ Until the Negro reaches this point of national independence, all he does as a race will count for naught, because the prejudice that will stand out against him even with his ballot in his hand, with his industrial progress to show, will be of such an overwhelming nature as to perpetuate mob violence and mob rule, from which he will suffer, and which he will not be able to stop with his industrial wealth and with his ballot. ”

“ There are brave men and women striving for social betterment, for the curbing of the vicious power of wealth, for the uplift of women and the downfall of thieves. But their battle is hard, and how much harder because of the race problem—because of the calloused conscience of caste, the peonage of black labor hands, the insulting of black women, and the stealing of black votes? How far are business dishonesty and civic degradation in America the direct result of racial prejudice? ”