Rassi

“ By State laws and the decision of the Supreme Court they belong to the negro or the American-African race. By the law of nature they belong, either to the Anglo-American race, or are a race within themselves. It is no longer a doubtful question; their constant increase in numbers shows that they are engenesic, and capable of maintaining within themselves a race of their own. Can such a people as this mixed race, imbued with the instincts, capabilities, and ambitions common to their white blood, be forever thrust back upon the negro race? ”

“ THE NEGRO PROBLEMS
It is impossible to separate the population of the world accurately by race, since that is no scientific criterion by which to divide races. If we divide the world, however, roughly into African Negroes and Negroids, European whites, and Asiatic and American brown and yellow peoples, we have approximately 150,000,000 Negroes, 500,000,000 whites, and 900,000,000 yellow and brown peoples. Of the 150,000,000 Negroes, 121,000,000 live in Africa, 27,000,000 [110] in the new world, and 2,000,000 in Asia. ”

“ The Negro tribes of Africa have frequently been supposed to belong to an inferior race of Men, an opinion founded—partly on an inadequate conception of the progressive character of the Human species—partly on ignorance of the progress which many Negro nations have actually made. ”

“ Two hundred years ago there were two distinct and separate streams of human life running through this country. They stood at opposite extremes of ethnological classification: all black on the one side, all white on the other. Now, between these two extremes, an intermediate race has arisen, which is neither white nor black, neither Caucasian nor Ethiopian, and this intermediate race is constantly increasing. ”

“ Experience has shown that whereas immigrants from Europe can ultimately be absorbed into what we may term the [pg 252] American race, the negro, wearing the badge of his race in the pigment of his skin, is not to be absorbed. Even the octoroon is clearly distinguishable from the white. The negro race must, so far as the future can be read, remain a race apart.
The case of the Indian affords another example of the failure of two races, separated by colour and other physical markings, to fuse. ”

“ Over the whole of the Southern portion of the great Continent of Africa is spread a remarkable and interesting race of mankind. Though divided into numerous tribes, and differing in appearance, manners, and customs, they are evidently cast in the same mould, and belong to the same group of the human race. They are dark, but not so black as the true negro of the West. Their hair is crisp, short, and curled, but not so woolly as that of the negro; their lips, though large when compared with those of Europeans, are small when compared to those of the negro. ”

“ In the pure-blooded clans who still dwell in the fastnesses of the Atlas and the Djurdjura, this antique type is that which is general; but in the valleys, in the desert and in Tunisia the type is darker, having been corrupted by admixture with negro, Arabic and other stocks.63 The fact which I wish especially to impress on you is that nowhere do we find a purer type of the white race than in northern Africa, and that this was recognized by the earliest writers and records as that especially belonging to this stock. ”

“ At least five distinct races are, as we know, universally recognized by ethnographers, — namely, the yellow or Asiatic race, the brown or Malays, the copper-colored or American-Indian, the negro or African, and,the Caucasian or white race. ”

“ If we consider the problem from an ethnological standpoint, we shall have four races in the United States—the white, negro, Indian, and Chinese. But these races do not mingle together. The Indian is dying out, and, although the negroes mingled in the days of slavery, the offspring carried the stigma of the race. ”

“ Thus we might go over the whole world, showing that races of nearly kindred blood ruled, the one over the other, but it is unnecessary. These different races have been so commingled in the United States that we have merely a struggle between all the branches of the great Caucasian family on the one, hand, and the African race on the other—between the highest and lowest, races of the earth. ”

“ The cultured and civilised races of Europe have there united their blood with the African negro and the native Indian savage; and both admixtures have been carried out on so great a scale as to furnish indisputable data for determining the question how far the half-breed is a mean between the two parents; or if there is any inevitable preponderance of one of them, with a tendency to revert to one or the other type. The intermarriage of fair and dark races of the Old World has gone on throughout the whole historic period, with apparently resultant intermediate types. ”

“ Within the area controlled by the United States are now to be found representatives of each of the grand divisions, or primary racial groups, and it would be a fascinating study to turn from the more practical topics before us and follow the races of man in their dispersion over the globe and their final gathering together again under the republic of America. First is the Aryan, or Indo-Germanic race, which, wherever it originated, sent its Sanskrit conquerors to the South to plant themselves upon a black race related to the Africans and the Australians. ”

“ Manifestly some of the great races of today–particularly the Negro race–have not as yet given to civilization the full spiritual message which they are capable of giving. I will not say that the Negro-race has yet given no message to the world, for it is still a mooted question among scientists as to just how far Egyptian civilization was Negro in its origin ”

“ The primitive Negroid race of men developed in Asia wandered eastward as well as westward. They entered on the one hand Burmah and the South Sea Islands, and on the other hand they came through Mesopotamia and gave curly hair and a Negroid type to Jew, Syrian, and Assyrian. Ancient statues of Indian divinities show the Negro type with black face and close-curled hair, and early Babylonian culture was Negroid. In Arabia the Negroes may have divided, and one stream perhaps wandered into Europe by way of Syria. ”

“ A mixture of the white and brown races seems to have largely formed the population of countries where they meet. The Moors of North Africa, and many so-called Arabs who are darker than white men, may be thus accounted for. It is thus that in India millions who speak Hindoo languages show by their tint that their race is mixed between that of the Aryan conquerors of the land and its darker indigenes. ”

“ Three main Negro types early made their appearance: the lighter and smaller primitive stock; the larger forest Negro in the center and on the west coast, and the tall, black Nilotic Negro in the eastern Sudan. In the earliest times we find the Negroes in the valley of the Nile, pressing downward from the interior. Here they mingled with Semitic types, and after a lapse of millenniums there arose from this mingling the culture of Ethiopia and Egypt, probably the first of higher human cultures. ”

“ Between these two extremes is an almost innumerable variety of mixed races, each having its own peculiar designation, indicating the precise proportion of European, Indian, and negro blood in their veins, each marked with its own peculiar physical, intellectual, and moral characteristics; and each finding its chief boast in the nearness of its relation to the white race, and looking down with contempt upon those a shade darker than its own. ”

“ Even within the strictly Negro division the anatomy, muscular system, physiognomy, colour, and speech offer as great a diversity of forms as is found amongst the white peoples of Europe or the yellow Asiatics. At the same time the classifications hitherto proposed by anthropologists, and based on physical resemblances or linguistic affinities, are of a purely conventional or provisional character. Numerous communities, of which little is known beyond their name, are grouped now in one, now in another division. ”

“ Thus he has shown that the characteristic physiognomy of the Negro is found to occur and disappear by nice gradations in strict accordance with the differences of climate throughout the African Continent.
The tendency to variety is very manifest, even from facts under our daily observation. Individuals are common among European nations, who exhibit some one or more of the traits of the Negro, as, for example, his woolly hair, thick lips, &c. Among the Negro races have been born individuals of a perfectly white colour. ”

“ The above traits are inborn and fundamental, belonging to the race everywhere, in Africa as well as America. Strict correctness requires, however, that attention be called to the fact that there are tribal differences among African Negroes that amount almost to the national variations of Europe; and these are reflected in American Negroes, who are the descendants of these different tribes. ”

“ Just as there are peoples belonging to the White, Caucasian or Eurafrican race who are almost black, so there are men of a light brown or yellow color who belong to the Black, Ethiopian or Austafrican race. Racial divisions are based not on any one character but on many taken together. But men differ not merely physically. ”

“ Many Pathans and Punjabi Mohammedans have blue eyes and are no darker than a southern European, whereas some of the depressed tribes are as black as Negroes. Many of the northern peoples are at least as tall as men of our own race, whereas other tribes do not average five feet. ”

“ As a matter of fact, there are several native races, varying in color from the intensely black and uncouth Guinea Negro of the West Coast to the olive-brown Arabs of the Sahara desert, and in civilization from the primitive dwarf tribes of Central Africa to the organized kingdoms of the Zulus and the thriving states of the Central lake region. Many arguments as to the negro character are based upon the supposed profound barbarism and cannibalism of all Africa. ”

“ In this view, the first migrations of the Negro stock, coasting westward by catamarans, or in wretched canoes, and skirting South-western Asia, may synchronize with the earliest appearance of the Negro tribes of Eastern Africa, and just precede the more mixed races, which, like the Ethiopians of Asia, passed the Red Sea at the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, ascended the Nile, or crossed that river to the west. ”

“ Before turning to this last and most prominent family of humankind, let us look for a moment at the other, darker races, seen vaguely as they come in contact with the whites. The negroes, set sharply by themselves in Africa, never seem to have created any progressive civilization of their own, never seem to have advanced further than we find the wild tribes in the interior of the country to-day. But the yellow or Turanian races, the Chinese and Japanese, the Turks and the Tartars, did not linger so helplessly behind. ”

“ That point concerns the biological breed of persons who should be selected by Negroes as leaders of their race. We risk the offense this time because efficiency in matters of racial leadership, as in other matters, should not be too tender to these points of prejudice when they stand in the way of desirable results. For two centuries in America we, the descendants of the black Negroes of Africa, have been told by white men that we cannot and will not amount to anything except in so far as we first accept the bar sinister of their mixing with us. ”

“ Of such mixed races are the tribes who thinly people the Saära,—Arabs, Berbers, Ethiopians of every hue; all equally Bedoweens,—wanderers of the pathless deserts. It did not escape the observation of our adventurers that the slaves of the Arab sheik and his followers were mostly pure negroes from the south, while those of the black chieftain,—as proclaimed by the color of their skin,—showed a Shemitic or Japhetic origin. The philosophic Colin could perceive in this a silent evidence of the retribution of races. ”

“ Negroes, the dark race of tropical Africa, distinguished by their dark woolly hair, their black eyes, their flat noses, and their thick lips; they occupy rather a low level in the scale of humanity, and are lacking in those mental and moral qualities which have impressed the stamp of greatness on the other races that have distinguished themselves in the history of the world. ”

“ A few men of negro extraction, with white blood in their veins, not any more negro than white man, consequently not negroes in the true sense of the word, are sent from the negro colleges of the south to lecture northern congregations upon the needs of their race; and these one-quarter, or perhaps three-quarters, white men are, with their intelligence, and sometimes brilliant oratory, held up as true types of the negro race by northerners ”

“ He says, “The brown and negro races of the Archipelago may be considered to present, in their physical and moral characters, a complete parallel with the white and negro races in the western world. The first has always displayed as great a relative superiority over the second, as the race of white men have done over the negroes of the west.” ”

“ The Black Race.—Africa south of the Sahara is the home of the peoples of the Black Race, but we find them on all the other continents and on many of the islands of the seas, whither they have migrated or been carried as slaves by the stronger races ”