Racial solidarity

“ There is, indeed, rather a tendency to racial solidarity in opposition to the whites on all questions whatsoever; continued failure to distinguish soundly between outward gifts and character; a general inclination to deny crime and side with criminals against the whites, no matter how flagrant the crime may be. There is, moreover, a not rare belief among the whites that the preachers and leaders contribute to increase these tendencies and teach hostility rather than try to uplift the race morally. This view is held sincerely by a considerable section of the well-informed whites of the South. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Segregation implies coercion by the dominant group. Racial solidarity implies certain subjective tendencies of like-mindedness. Racial solidarity may be enhanced by segregation but it thrives best if its causes have their roots in the will to progress rather than the will to exist amidst oppression. 510 Though segregation may aid the tendency toward racial solidarity, neither segregation nor racial solidarity are to be advised in a modern civilization. Racial solidarity for protective reasons with strong limitations (never legal) may be advisable today in America. ”

“ When we have reached the first milestone on our journey—racial solidarity—the rest of the way will be comparatively easy. Success has come to the Jew and to the Japanese because they are clannish. Black isn't a bad shade ”

“ 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? ”

“ Disguise it as we may, in business, politics, education or other departments of life, we as Negroes are compelled to fight for what we want to win from the white world.
It is easy enough for those colored men whose psychology is shaped by their white inheritance to argue the ethics of compromise and inter-racial co-operation. But we whose brains are still unbastardized must face the frank realities of this situation of racial conflict and competition. Wherefore, it is well that we marshal our forces to withstand and make head against the constant racial pressure. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The aim is merely to make apparent and objective its place and importance in race relations, to indicate some of the ways in which it has developed; how it expresses itself, how it affects both the white and Negro groups; how, in its present state, it is strengthened, weakened, polluted, or purified by deliberate agencies or even by its own action, and finally how it may be used to reduce, if not to prevent, racial unfriendliness and misunderstanding. ”

“ We therefore urge upon all citizens, white and Negro, active opposition to the employment of force or violence in interracial relations and to the spirit of antagonism and hatred. We recommend dispassionate, intelligent, and sympathetic consideration by each race of the other's needs and aims; we also recommend the dissemination of proved or trustworthy information about all phases of race relations as a useful means for effecting peaceful racial adjustment. ”

“ It is too late in the history of the world to go back to the idea of absolute racial segregation. The new African State would not involve any idea of a vast transplantation of the twenty-seven million Negroids of the western world, of Africa, or of the gathering there of Negroid Asia. The Negroes in the United States and the other Americas have earned the right to fight out their problems where they are, but they could easily furnish from time to time technical experts, leaders of thought, and missionaries of culture for their backward brethren in the new Africa. ”

“ For this is all that our intellects can do in the case of a racial problem—to help us to understand. The actual work of adjustment must be fought out or worked out; becomes, that is to say, a struggle to be settled by the contending races with forces more complex than the purely intellectual ones of argument and proof. Let us first consider, then, the conditions under which the relations between the black and white races were established in America. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ I believe that the abolition of racial segregation in public schools and public facilities is a desirable end; that Southerners in defending such segregation in the 1950’s are fighting the tide of history just as surely as their forefathers did in defending human bondage a century ago; and that the Negro’s drive to end this segregation will eventually be successful. I recognize the tremendous difficulties presented by this problem due to long established [Pg vi] mores and realize that it cannot be solved quickly and without a certain amount of social friction and resentment. ”

“ Not many years ago, the United States of America was divided by a civil war on the question of the treatment, of the negro population. Even to-day, the colour problem in that country is so acute that a negro convict is in grave danger of being lynched. ”

“ And this is the ground upon which we of the South place our cherished institutions. We maintain that these justifying circumstances do exist in relation to our institution of negro slavery. They consist in the unfitness of the black race for a condition higher than that of slavery. Our proposition is, that when these two races are brought into contact, the supremacy of the white man must be acknowledged, and his right to govern both races with reference to the happiness of both. This is the principle upon which, until recently, the legislation of all your northern States was founded. ”

“ Heaven save my people—nine-tenths of whom, like him, would deal with the negro in justice and righteousness and helpfulness—from the stress and the blood of an open conflict against social equality with the negro race, and from the further unspeakable, unthinkable horror of defeat in such a conflict if it shall come upon them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But I ask why should there be a negro problem any more than a problem for any other class of the American people? We need not go far to seek the answer. It is found in the fact that in certain parts of our country the people are not willing to receive the negro into full fellowship and to grant him the civil and political rights enjoyed in common by other citizens. ”

“ The relationship between those figures and the history of unequal treatment afforded to the Negro cannot be denied. At every point from birth to death, the impact of the past is reflected in the still disfavored position of the Negro.
In light of the sorry history of discrimination and its devastating impact on the lives of Negroes, bringing the Negro into the mainstream of American life should be a state interest of the highest order. ”

“ We have been advised, if we really wished to benefit the slave and the colored race generally, not unnecessarily to shock the feelings, though they were but prejudices, of the white people, by admitting colored persons to our Anti-slavery meetings and societies. We have been told that many who would otherwise act in unison with us were kept away by our disregard of the feelings of the community in this respect.... ”

“ The racial antipathy felt by the alien whites, along with their cultural repugnance and economic apprehensions, intrenched the negroes permanently in the situation. The most fertile Southern areas when once converted into black belts tended, and still tend as strongly as ever, to be tilled only by inert negroes, the majority of whom are as yet perhaps less efficient in freedom than their forbears were as slaves. ”

“ In the past we Negroes have failed to appreciate what solidarity means. We have, on the contrary, been much divided. Since the riot we are getting together and devising ways and means of protecting our interests. The recent race riots have convinced 47 us that we must take steps to protect ourselves. Never again will we be found unprepared. ”

“ The way out, therefore, is to change our mental attitude on this subject and vitalize every legitimate movement for negro migration North, East and West. Let those States welcoming the negroes to equal rights make known the fact, opening wide their doors, and negroes will continue to leave the South as they are now doing, in great numbers, thus relieving race friction. Undoubtedly the Southern States should cooperate in the movement, instantly repealing such laws as impose fine and imprisonment on emigration agents and giving up negro labor for the general welfare. ”

“ They see in it an attempt, on the part of the authorities, to secure the sympathy and coöperation of the free blacks, in case of a revolutionary movement—to set race against race, and to make the free blacks familiar with military duty, while the whites are growing up in ignorance of it. In point of civil privileges, the free blacks are the equals of the whites. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”