Racial segregation

“ The earliest history of man reflects an awareness of racial distinctions; in one fashion or another, discrimination has existed through all recorded time, and “prejudice,” if you please, like the poor, has been with us always. It exists among the Negro people themselves. It exists around the world, and may be seen in especially cruel and virulent forms in some of those nations said to be so terribly offended by the manifestations of segregation that remain in the American South. ”

“ The definite racial aim of segregation is to prevent the contact of races physically; to prevent Negroes from living with the whites in their neighborhoods and vice versa; to keep themselves separate as a group, thus making segregation of schools and other institutions a natural sequence. Whereas, the aim of racial solidarity is to focus the financial, economic, political and social strength of the group for the purpose of meeting the attacks of the white race as well as for the solution of group problems ”

“ Negroes tend to flock together as do members of other racial groups. I do not regard this as segregation. When an effort is made from without to group them together, which carries along with it restrictions of movement, residence or activity, we have segregation. Racial solidarity seems to me to be the conscious or unconscious reaction to segregation. ”

“ They have, for instance, sent a "questionnaire" to prominent colored men, consisting of fifteen questions, which with all their surface frankness and innocence seek to betray black folk by means of the logical dilemma of "segregation" and racial "solidarity." By subtle suggestion these queries say: If you believe in colored churches, why not in colored ghettos? Does not Negro advancement increase anti-Negro hatred? Are not Negroes prejudiced against whites? Are not the mistakes of Negro leaders manifest? ”

“ Segregation and racial solidarity differ fundamentally and essentially in the motive prompting the individual act to be discussed. Segregation is the forcing apart of any group into a less favorable environment in order that advantage or position may accrue to those in authority. Race solidarity represents the active part in the same rôle, and is the effort of individuals to utilize similarity of aims or of situation as the basis of an offensive or defensive alliance. ”

“ Attempting to dispose of the moral and psychological implications of racism, the News and Courier insists that Southern whites should entertain no sense of guilt in connection with segregation policies. “It was God [Pg 69] who created people with different physical characteristics. Who is to say that the races He created separate and distinct should now be scrambled?” If separation on the basis of race were sinful, so was separation by faiths and creeds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For instance, some men, including both Negroes and white persons, believe that the proper solution of the race problem is the deportation of the Negro race; others, that it is the segregation of that race in some portion of the United States or colonization in some territorial possession; while others believe that the South should remain the permanent home of the majority of Negroes. Advocates of territorial separation of one sort or another think that efforts should be directed toward getting the Negro to his new home as soon as possible. ”

“ The great mass of Negroes, however, soon accommodate themselves to segregation regulations, whether for schools, railways, or for the residential sections of cities and seem to care but little about the question of equality. It is only when stirred up by the unwise of their own race, or by some sentimental, if well-meaning, but shallow-thinking whites, who have lived far removed from association with Negroes, that they manifest much interest in such matters. ”

“ Here we encounter one of the greatest dangers attendant upon race segregation, where the two races are not equal before the law, where public opinion makes and enforces one law for the upper race, and practically another law for the under race. ”

“ Moreover, we cannot ignore the fact that assimilation today has proceeded much beyond where it was at the earlier periods. Blush or shudder, as many will, mixture of blood has been making inroads on segregation faster than change in law. No clear line of separation between the races has been observed. More and more a large population with as much claim to white as to colored blood baffles any justice in classification for segregation. ”

“ With us race riots are unknown, and we have but one Negro problem—though that constantly confronts us—how to secure more Negroes." Evidently when we hear reports of states of siege and rumors of race war, we are not to understand that this is the normal, typical condition of the entire South. If this is the real situation, it seems clear that the geographical segregation plays no mean part in determining the relation of the two races. ”

“ That solution is segregation. It offers intact all the advantages which the opportunities of life among a highly civilized race create without the demoralizing and humiliating influences at work on account of race prejudice. It frees the whites and Negroes alike and enlarges the opportunities for the development of each race, under a common flag, that will no longer be under the necessity of polluting the pure air of Heaven by withholding its protection from among even the humblest of its citizens. ”

“ With a few notable exceptions, most Negro spokesmen appear to spend their time condoning and minimizing the characteristics that deprive their race of a “first-class” reputation. Are Negro neighborhoods filthy? The Negro, it is said, has no incentive to clean them up. Why does this appalling rate of illegitimacy persist? The Negro, it is said, must relieve the frustrations brought on by segregation. Are Negro incomes generally low? It is all the fault of the white man: He deprives the Negro of job opportunities. ”

“ By segregation, I did not mean isolation, but the natural grouping together of Negroes under wholesome conditions, but which permitted their contact through employment, through meetings for the common good, with the dominant race.
Even a minority has the right to expect and demand justice in opportunity to develop industrial, social and spiritual growth. I recognize that education of both whites and blacks is necessary to overcome fear and prejudice and make this possible. ”

“ All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities. A Negro slum may be in dangerous proximity to a white residence quarter, while it is quite common to find a white slum planted in the heart of a respectable Negro district. One thing, however, seldom occurs: the best of the whites and the best of the Negroes almost never live in anything like close proximity. ”

“ 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 southern white man, wiser in his generation than most of his competitors, easily realized that he could not legally reënslave the Negro, but early devised a scheme to convert the North to the doctrine of segregation, educational distinctions, and the elimination of the Negroes from the body politic, to make it improbable, if not impossible, for the Negroes to attain the status of white men. ”

“ There is a difference between segregation and separation, especially so in the southern interpretation of segregation as observed in the practice of the South in its enforcement of the idea. Separation in matters social and religious is not necessarily objectionable. Left alone each race group instinctively seeks separation from other race groups. But segregation, as we have it, means more than separation; it means inferiority and humiliation. It means not only another section of the city for the negro, but a section that is inferior in improvement and protection ”

“ Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society ”

“ 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. ”

“ Amalgamation is a thousand leagues remote from the sphere of practical politics. I have been endeavouring to state for outsiders the case of the South as I understand it. I may have stated it wrongly, or understated it; but no one can possibly overstate the resolve of the South that the colour line shall not be obliterated by “miscegenation.”
233 Four Possibilities: IV. Segregation. Lastly, we have to consider the fourth conceivable eventuality—the geographical segregation of the negro race, whether within or without the limits of the United States. ”

“ The denial of rights guaranteed the Negro by the Constitution and the refusal to grant him the ordinary privileges of a freeman have created what is called the “Negro Problem”—the most prominent, the gravest and the most important question in American affairs. Ten millions of people with African blood in their veins—“an undifferentiated part of the Nation”—are made the objects of the meanest discrimination and the most unjust treatment by a so-called superior race seven times their number. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas. Its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. ”

“ The negro perhaps suffers by way of discrimination in the number of arrests and convictions compared with the whites, yet it is significant that in proportion to total numbers the negro prisoners in the Northern states are nearly twice as many as in the Southern states. Here, again, city life works its degenerating effects, for the Northern negroes are congregated mainly in towns and cities, while the Southern negroes remain in the country. ”

“ We believe that the first and greatest step toward the settlement of the present friction between the races—commonly called the Negro Problem—lies in the correction of the immorality, crime and laziness among the Negroes themselves, which still remains as a heritage from slavery. We believe that only earnest and long continued efforts on our own part can cure these social ills. ”

“ We protest against segregated districts, separate public conveyances, industrial discrimination, lynchings and limitations of political privileges of any Negro citizen in any part of the world on account of race, color or creed, and will exert our full influence and power against all such. ”

“ Here is a picture that every Negro in the country may contemplate with satisfaction and pride. In the stronghold of slavery, under the shadow of the legalized institution of slavery, within earshot of the slave-auctioneer's hammer, amid distressing circumstances, poverty, and proscription, three unlettered ex-slaves, upon the threshold of the nineteenth century, sowed the seed of education for the Negro race in the District of Columbia, from which an abundant harvest has been gathered, and will be gathered till the end of time! ”

“ 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. ”