Ethnic enclave

“ The ethnic diversity of the Nation is not yet recognized and valued as one of the greatest riches and the indigenous peoples continue to be subject to strong racial, ethnic and cultural discrimination which deprives them of the enjoyment of their basic human rights. ”

“ So far as socio-economics were concerned, African society ran the scale from bottom to top. The Bushmen of the Ermelo district of the Transvaal and the Kalahari are stone age people still—savages. Throughout the continent we find tribes at an ethnic level which American Anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan called barbarism. ”

“ They form endless tribal, or at least social, groups, who keep somewhat aloof from their proto-Aryan conquerors, so that, in the east especially, the [Pg 543] ethnic fusion is far from complete, the various sections of the community being still rather juxtaposed than fused in a single nationality. ”

“ Are we therefore under the influence of prejudice? If we are, it is a prejudice which duty prompts us exercise. But we have bestowed more attention to this objection than it deserves. Nothing can be plainer than that the colonization scheme has had a great influence in weakening this prejudice against the blacks, and creating an interest in their behalf, which must, in the nature of things, continue to increase until the whole race shall be restored to an equality with the whites. ”

“ My third and greatest objection to the Colonization Society is, that its members write and speak, both in public and private, as if the prejudice against skins darker colored than our own, was a fixed and unalterable law of our nature, which cannot possibly be changed. The very existence of the Society is owing to this prejudice: for if we could make all the colored people white, or if they could be viewed as impartially as if they were white, what would be left for the Colonization Society to do? ”

“ I am aware that some of the Colonizationists make large professions on this subject; but nevertheless we are constantly told by this Society, that people of color must be removed, not only because they are in our way, but because they must always be in a state of degradation here—that they never can have all the rights and privileges of citizens—and all this is because the prejudice is so great. ”

“ If we are to send away the colored population because they are profligate and vicious, what sort of missionaries will they make? Why not send away the vicious among the whites, for the same reason and the same purpose? If ignorance be a crime, where shall we begin to select? How much must a man know to save him from transportation? How white must he be? If we send away a mixed breed, how many will be left? If foreigners only, then the people of color must remain—for they are our countrymen. ”

“ The colored people never can rise from their menial condition in our country; they ought not to be permitted to rise here. They are an inferior race of beings, and never can or ought to be recognized as the equals of the whites. Africa is the place for them. I am in favor of the Colonization scheme. Let the niggers and their descendants be sent back to their fatherland; and there improve themselves as much as they may, and civilize and Christianize the natives, if they can. ”

“ And who, but the advocates of the Colonization Society, receive him as a welcome guest? Who but they have built him a temple, and cried, "Long live Prejudice against free born Americans of sable hue!" Who but they are continually crying, "The free blacks are dangerous! the free blacks are dangerous! Away with them—away with them to Africa!" Who but they are the apologists for murder, theft, and all the horrid concomitants of slavery? ”

“ By the acts and operations of wicked men, shielded under a cloak of religion, we the people of color are doomed to all the miseries that the human body is able to sustain—deprived of light, knowledge and social intercourse, by the colonization gentlemen. ”

“ I speak of things as they are—not as they might, or as they ought to be. They are cut off from the most remote chance of amalgamation with the white population, by feelings or prejudices, call them what you will, that are ineradicable. ”

“ But it is a racial, almost a historical, phenomenon that these same younger sons who go under in the far places colonized by their own countrymen, make often supremely good when circumstance forces them to live and work amongst either inferior peoples, as in Africa, or a people of a different civilization and culture, as in Asia. ”

“ A people, whose condition, while it excites our commiseration, must awaken our fears.' * * 'Those persons of color who have been emancipated, are only nominally free; and the whole race, so long as they remain among us, and whether they be slaves or free, must necessarily be kept in a condition full of wretchedness to them and full of danger to the whites. This view of the subject is rendered the more alarming by the rapid increase of this portion of our population.'— [Second Annual Report of the New-York State Colonization Society, pp. 4, 34.] ”

“ Unwilling, however, to take the position that a race should be doomed because of personal objections, many of the early anti-slavery group looked toward colonization for a solution of this problem. [5] Some thought of Africa, but since the deportation of a large number of persons who had been brought under the influence of modern civilization seemed cruel, the most popular colonization scheme at first seemed to be that of settling the Negroes on the public lands in the West. ”

“ Britons and Scythians were the fellow-slaves of the Ethiopian: but at last all the other nations of the earth seemed to conspire against the negro race, agreeing never to enslave each other, but to make the blacks the slaves of all alike. Thus, this race of human beings has been singled out, whether owing to the accident of color, or to their peculiar fitness for certain kinds of labor, for infamy and misfortune; and the abolition of the practice of promiscuous slavery in the modern world, was purchased by the introduction of a slavery confined entirely to negroes. ”

“ How stands the case of the negro, in the non-slave-holding States? Free to go in advance of settlement, into the wilderness of the West, and there to found a colony of their own, exempt from the inferiority they must ever experience while in contact with the white man, they have continued to hang about the towns and cities, and generally to gain their subsistence by menial service to the white race. ”

“ The free Negroes of the North, inspired by the mulatto immigrants from the West Indies, began to change the basis of their demands; they recognized the slavery of slaves, but insisted that they themselves were freemen, and sought assimilation and amalgamation with the nation on the same terms with other men. ”

“ In one breath, colonization orators tell us that the free blacks are pests in the community; that they are an intemperate, ignorant, lazy, thievish class; that their condition is worse than that of the slaves; and that no efforts to improve them in this country can be successful, owing to the prejudices of society. ”

“ The interior natives have found out that a home in our vicinity is equivalent to an act of emancipation; and, as a consequence, remnants of tribes who for centuries have been the prey of their stronger neighbors, for the slave trade; and boys and men, upwards of 100 miles inland, who have been held in slavery; crowd in upon our neighborhood for freedom. Behind our settlements, on the St. Paul, there is the most heterogeneous mixture conceivable, of divers tribes and families, who have thus sought the protection of our commonwealth. ”

“ If the household contained any captive of the aboriginal race, such a one, by renouncing his ancient customs and creed, and accepting the language, the faith and the law of the conqueror, retained life and comparative liberty. And, moreover, all ethnological investigations confirm the belief that the aborigines of India were of the negro, or what is commonly called African family. ”

“ Resolved, That in whatever light we view the Colonization Society, we discover nothing in it but terror, prejudice and oppression; that the warm and beneficent hand of philanthropy is not apparent in the system, but the influence of the Society on public opinion is more prejudicial to the interest and welfare of the people of color in the United States, than slavery itself. ”

“ If the Society is anxious to emancipate the slaves, why does it not confine its efforts exclusively to their transportation, seeing so many are offered for that purpose? Doubtless the reply will be—'O, it is important, in the incipient state of the colony, to send free persons of color, because they are more intelligent and virtuous.' Ah! ”

“ Resolved, That we are truly sensible that we are in this country a degraded and ignorant people; but that our ignorance and degradation are not to be attributed to the inferiority of our natural abilities, but to the oppressive treatment we have experienced from the whites in general, and to the prejudice excited against us by the members of the Colonization Society, their aiders and abettors. ”

“ Is it because those who cherish it are treated as the offscouring of all flesh, in the place of their birth? or because they do not possess equal rights and privileges with other citizens? or because they are the victims of incorrigible hate and prejudice? or because they are told that they must choose between exilement and perpetual degradation? or because the density of population renders it impossible for them to obtain preferment and competence here? or because they are estranged by oppression and scorn? ”

“ I object to the colonization scheme, because it tends to weaken the Negro’s hold on one country, while it can give him no rational hope of another. Its tendency is to make him despondent and doubtful, where he should feel assured and confident. It forces upon him the idea that he is for ever doomed to be a stranger and a sojourner in the land of his birth, and that he has no permanent abiding place here. ”

“ By this firm administration of equal justice the Aboriginal population, instead of being, as formerly, a hostile, treacherous, and troublesome race, had become harmless, docile, and in some degree useful to the settlers. ”

“ I think the voluntary collections of like tribes and races of men, as Italians, Jews, Chinese, Poles, Norwegians, Swedes, and the like, in settlements in our large cities and some country districts, show clearly the gregarious disposition of like peoples; and from time out of mind each tribe, clan or race, has depended upon itself for patronage and support. In order for the Negro to succeed in any considerable degree in business in the North, it would be necessary to increase the Negro population in that section. ”

“ The act passed on the subject is rather remarkable for the language in which it is couched; showing, as it does, that it was made to relieve the Indian, and fix the term of the Negro's bondage beyond a reasonable doubt. "It is resolved and enacted that all servants not being Christians imported into this colony by shipping shall be slaves for their lives; but what shall come by land shall serve, if boyes or girles, until thirty yeares of age, if men or women twelve yeares and no longer." ”

“ Colonization has taken the negro from under his disabilities here, and placed him where he has developed to an intellectual and moral stature never reached before by his race, and now holds him up as the optical demonstration of what the negro may easily become. Whole nebula of phrenological speculations and scientific infidelities have thus been dissipated; and there, star-like, shines out the negro intellect, clear and bright. There, intelligence, freedom, and religion, flourish amongst the descendants of Ham—amidst the much maligned Ethiopian race. ”

“ So far from being equal to us, the polished inhabitants of Europe, as some ignorant people suppose, they are immeasurably below the Africans themselves,
"The typical Negro is the true savage of Africa; and I must paint the deformed anatomy of his mind, as I have already done that of his body.
"The typical Negroes dwell in petty tribes, where all are equal except the women, who are slaves; where property is common, and where, consequently, there is no property at all; where one may recognize the Utopia of philosophers, and observe the saddest and basest spectacles which humanity can afford. ”

“ The time will soon be over for the study of the Aborigines of America. We have in 250 years wasted them from uncounted numbers to a scattering population of only about 275,000, while in the same length of time a cargo of dusky slaves from the African shores have become a people of millions, slaves no longer, but protected citizens. In the redskin, whom we have dispossessed of his native rights, we recognize no equality; yet the descendant of the barbarous black, whose tribe on the Golden Coast still trembles before a fetish, may now sit at the desk of Clay or Calhoun. ”

“ The American Colonization Society proposes a remedy—the removal to Africa of the blacks who are free, or shall hereafter become so, with their consent.' * * 'The colored population is considered by the people of Tennessee and Alabama in general, as an immense evil to the country—but the free part of it, by all, as the greatest of all evils.... ”

“ That the severities of the African slave trade, and the horrors of Negro slavery, as exhibited in European colonies and possessions, are entirely modern—confined to a short period in the history of the world, and therefore not a true exemplification of the general condition of the Negro race. ”

“ The only excuse they can make for the measure is that there is no hope for the Negro here, and that the coloured people in America owe something to Africa.
This last sentimental idea makes colonization very fascinating to the dreamers of both colours. But there is really no foundation for it.
They tell us that we owe something to our native land. This sounds well. But when the fact is brought to view, which should never be forgotten, that a man can only have one native land and that is the land in which he is born, the bottom falls entirely out of this sentimental argument. ”