Racial inferiority

“ It is very far from our thought to suggest the slightest question of racial superiority or inferiority. What we suggest is merely racial difference, and it is of such character and extent that the great body of our people instinctively recognize it and reject the thought of assimilation. ”

“ I finally made up my mind that I would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race; but that I would change my name, raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would; that it was not necessary for me to go about with a label of inferiority pasted across my forehead. All the while I understood that it was not discouragement or fear or search for a larger field of action and opportunity that was driving me out of the Negro race. I knew that it was shame, unbearable shame. Shame at being identified with a people that could with impunity be treated worse than animals. ”

“ But in Southern communities, where the Negro is not outnumbered by many thousands of white people, the race problem, essentially, and in its most acute form, is something distinct from his laziness or ignorance, or brutality, or criminality, or all-round intellectual and moral inferiority to the white man. ”

“ When, finally, we consider the inferior position held by the negro race of the United States, who are in the closest contact with modern civilization, we must not forget that the old race-feeling of the inferiority of the colored race is as potent as ever and is a formidable obstacle to its advance and progress, notwithstanding that schools and universities are open to them. ”

“ It is unnecessary in 20th-century America to have individual Negroes demonstrate that they have been victims of racial discrimination; the racism of our society has been so pervasive that none, regardless of wealth or position, has managed to escape its impact. The experience of Negroes in America has been different in kind, not just in degree, from that of other ethnic groups. It is not merely the history of slavery alone, but also that a whole people were marked as inferior by the law. ”

“ Thus it happened that the Negro, through the descriptions that he got of himself, has come largely to believe in his inherent inferiority and that to attain superiority he must become like the white man in color, in achievements and, in fact, along all lines. ”

“ For one race to demand such a line of separation, is to consign the other race to a position of inferiority as humiliating as it is discouraging. Such is the demand of race prejudice, and such the position of inferiority in which it insists on placing the Negro. Slavery held the Negro there, and since emancipation, this race-separation is intended to accomplish the same purpose. The Southern white man makes no objection to the race or color of the Negro, but only to his position as an equal. He was not merely tolerated, he was more than tolerated, as a slave, and he is now as a servant. ”

“ The black nurse with a white baby in her arms, the black valet looking after the comfort of a white invalid, have the label of their inferiority conspicuously upon them; they understand themselves, and everybody understands them, to be servants, enjoying certain privileges for the sake of the person served. Almost anything, the Negro may do in the South, and anywhere he may go, provided the manner of his doing and his doing is that of an inferior. ”

“ In order to decide what is our duty concerning the Africans and their descendants, we must first clearly make up our minds whether they are, or are not, human beings—whether they have, or have not, the same capacities for improvement as other men.
The intellectual inferiority of the negroes is a common, though most absurd apology, for personal prejudice, and the oppressive inequality of the laws; for this reason, I shall take some pains to prove that the present degraded condition of that unfortunate race is produced by artificial causes, not by the laws of nature. ”

“ But until all these things are realized, if they must live together in the same territory, the negro’s mind will forever be depressed to the dust with a sense of conscious inferiority, and can never aspire to those elevated distinctions of which it is capable. ”

“ The wrongs which they continued to practice upon him was a terror to them through their conscience, though then, as in later years, many, and particularly the leaders, endeavored to impress others with their feigned belief of the natural inferiority of the negro to themselves. ”

“ In effect slavery can only be justified in the abstract on the grounds which slavery advocates decline to take boldly, though they insinuate it now and then, that is, the inferiority of the negro in respect to white men, which removes them from the upper class of human beings and places them in a condition which is as much below the Caucasian standard as the quadrumanous creatures are beneath the negro. ”

“ He wrote: "Deep-rooted prejudices of the whites, ten thousand recollections of blacks of injuries sustained, new provocations, the real distinction Nature has made, and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties and produce convulsions which will probably [Pg 18] never end but in the extermination of one or the other race." So he looked for a remedy to emancipation followed by deportation. But he hesitated to affirm any essential inferiority in the negro race. ”

“ What are the racial endowments of these risen negroes whom we are urged by lofty example to invite into our drawing-rooms upon terms of broadest equality—for upon other terms would be a mockery—as eligible associates, companions, suitors, husbands for our sisters and daughters?—for a sensible father or brother does not admit white men to his home on any other basis. Of what essential racial elements and sources is the negro, risen and unrisen alike? ”

“ The traits of the American negro are adequately explained on the basis of his history and social status. The tearing-away from the African soil and the consequent complete loss of the old standards of life, which were replaced by the dependency of slavery and by all it entailed, followed by a period of disorganization and by a severe economic struggle against heavy odds, are sufficient to explain the inferiority of the status of the race, without falling back upon the theory of hereditary inferiority. ”

“ The superiority of this mentally endowed race is manifest, even in their most barbarous state; and I have been led, therefore, to disbelieve the general presumption, that the Negro is universally the type of man in his most degraded condition. ”

“ Race lines must be obliterated at the South, and the old theory of the natural inferiority of the Negro must give way to the demonstrations of Negro capacity. A new doctrine must supplant the old theories of pre-slavery days, and every man in the Republic must enjoy a citizenship as wide as the continent, and, like the coin of the Government, pass for his intrinsic value, and no more. ”

“ We have consequently the present reaction—a reaction which says in effect, Keep these black people in their places, and do not attempt to treat a Negro simply as a white man with a black face; to do this would mean the moral deterioration of the race and the nation—a fate against which a divine racial prejudice is successfully fighting. ”

“ If we listen vainly for the heart-throb of the race problem in the Negro's laziness, and criminality, and brutality, and ignorance, and inefficiency, do we detect it with clearness and certainty in the personal aversion felt by the white people for the black people, aversion which the white people can no more help feeling than the black people can help exciting? ”

“ The basis of it is owing to some supposed inferiority or degradation attached to the hated ones. However, nothing is more foolish than this prejudice. But the silliest of all caste is that which is founded on color; for those who entertain it have not a single logical reason to offer in its defence.
The fact is, slavery has been the cause of all the prejudice against the negro. Wherever the blacks are ill-treated on account of their color, it is because of their identity with a race that has long worn the chain of slavery. Is there anything in black that should be hated? ”

“ But what seems to escape attention is the fact that the Negro boy and girl, getting the same (though worse) instruction, also get from it the same notion of the Negro’s place and part in life which the white children get. Is it any wonder, then, that they so readily accept the status of inferiors; that they tend to disparage themselves, and think themselves worth while only to the extent to which they look and act and think like the whites? ”

“ Now, under the elevating and cherishing influence of the American Anti-slavery Society, the colored race, like the white, furnishes Corinthian capitals for the noblest temples. Aroused by the American Anti-slavery Society, the very white men who had forgotten and denied the claim of the black man to the rights of humanity, now thunder that claim at every gate, from cottage to capitol, from school-house to university, from the railroad carriage to the house of God. He has a place at their firesides, a place in their hearts—the man whom they once cruelly hated for his color. ”

“ The struggle of the negro to rise out of his ignorance, his poverty and his social degradation, in consequence of the growth of these new forces and ideas within him, to the full stature of his American citizenship, has been met everywhere in the South by the active ill-will and determined race-hatred and opposition of the white people of that section. Turn where he will, he encounters this cruel and implacable spirit. He dare not speak openly the thoughts which rise in his breast. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It would seem indeed, that if any race have a right claim to a sort of preeminence over others, on the fair and honorable ground of talents displayed, and benefits conferred, it is precisely this very one, which we take upon us, in the pride of a temporary superiority, to stamp with the brand of essential degradation. It is hardly necessary to add, that while the blacks were the leading race in civilization and political power, there was no prejudice among the whites against their color. ”

“ The general prejudice is, that they make the harshest masters; but I believe the cause of their exacting too much is, that they do not understand the character of the negro, nor his capabilities; that they expect from him more than he can perform either physically or intellectually. Indeed, how can they understand all the peculiarities of these poor people as well as we can, who have been brought up amongst them--played with them in our childhood, and grown with them from youth to manhood? ”

“ I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race prejudice.
The more I consider the subject, the more strongly I am convinced that the most harmful effect of the practice to which the people in certain sections of the South have felt themselves compelled to resort, in order to get rid of the force of the Negroes' ballot, is not wholly in the wrong done to the Negro, but in the permanent injury to the morals of the white man. The wrong to the Negro is temporary, but to the morals of the white man the injury is permanent. ”

“ A deeply rooted prejudice shut the Negro out from the trades. He could not acquire the art of setting type, civil engineering, building machinery, house carpentering, or any of the trades. The schools of medicine, law, and theology were not open to him; and even if he secured admission into some gentleman's office, or instruction from some divine, the future gave him no promise. The white wings of hope were broken in an ineffectual attempt to move against the bitter winds of persecution, under the dark sky of hate and proscription. ”

“ Racial antipathy seems to depend in the degree of its strength upon the degree of physical disparity between given races. In the so-called Latin races of to-day, prejudice against black people is certainly weaker than in the blond races of Northern Europe. Is this aversion a matter of absolute instinct or is it an acquired social characteristic and as such liable to change? ”

“ But, fortunately for the Negro and for humanity at large, we live now in an epoch when race malice and sectional hate are disappearing beneath the horizon of a brighter and better future. The Negro in America is free. He is now an acknowledged factor in the affairs of the continent; and no community, state, or government, in this period of the world's history, can afford to be indifferent to his moral, social, intellectual, or political well-being. ”

“ A certain shade of complexion, though much lighter than some brunettes, consigned any one guilty of it to the grade of the blacks, which was de-gradation. We were educated to regard negroes as an inferior race of beings, not entitled to the distinctive rights and privileges of white men. Ignorance, poverty, and servitude came to be considered the birthright, the inheritance, of all Africans and their descendants; and therefore we did not feel the pressure of their bonds, nor the smart of the wounds that were continually given them.
Prejudice against color had become universal. ”