White child

“ Asking a teacher of long experience among colored and white children concerning their respective scholarship, he assured me that the colored child could do as well as the white, but didn't. "From 20 to 50 per cent of the mothers of my colored children," he said, "go out to work. There is no one to oversee the child's tasks, and consequently little conscientious study."
One can scarcely blame the children; and certainly one cannot blame the mothers for toiling for their support. ”

“ Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. ”

“ It is conceivable that the moral influence of the white children over the negroes in the same school might exert a lasting benefit, even aside from the influence of the teacher; and the relationship of the school room could not be any real disadvantage to the white child. ”

“ The term ‘white children’ shall include all other children.” An Oklahoma statute [403] of 1907 requires complete separation of the races in schools, with impartial facilities for both races. By “colored children,” it means those that have any “quantum of Negro blood.” The teacher who knowingly and willingly permits a child of one race to be taught in a school for another race is guilty of a misdemeanor, and may be punished by a fine of between ten and a hundred dollars and, in addition, may have his certificate cancelled and be unable to secure another for a year. ”

“ Once the colored child understands the white world's attitude and the shameful wrong of it, you have furnished it with a great life motive,—a power and impulse toward good which is the mightiest thing man has. How many white folk would give their own souls if they might graft into their children's souls a great, moving, guiding ideal! ”

“ If they are kept in separate schools this line becomes more distinct, with one colored child filling the mind of other colored children with bad ideas, and the white child doing likewise, which is never helpful to the community. ”

“ The Child of the Tenement
Within the last few years white Americans, many of whom were formerly ignorant of their condition, have been taught that they are possessed of a racial antipathy for human beings whose color is not their own. They have a "natural contrariety," "a dislike that seems constitutional" toward the dark tint that they see on another's face. But however well they may have conned their lesson, it breaks down or is likely to be forgotten in the presence of a Negro baby; for a healthy colored baby is a subject, not for natural contrariety, but for sympathetic cuddling. ”

“ The gentle, chivalrous affection of the child for its mother is daily to be seen among these boys and girls. "Your African," said Mary Kingsley, "is little better than a slave to his mother, whom he loves with a love he gives to none other. This love of his mother is so dominant a factor in his life that it must be taken into consideration in attempting to understand the true Negro." ”

“ In the white American group only one child out of 3,439 retarded children is retarded five and one-half to six years, while there are forty-one in the corresponding Negro group out of a total of 4,412. One white child is retarded six and one-half to seven years, while seventeen Negro children are retarded this amount ”

“ Simplicity and naturalness accompany every stage of the little one’s life until the age of puberty, when the child-life is supposed to end, and the man or woman life begins. 184
A HEALTHY AND HAPPY INDIAN BABY.
Now, while of very necessity our method of treating white children must be different from this, we can learn many lessons from the Indian that will materially benefit our race. ”

“ With what eyes can the white child look upon the colored child and the colored child look upon himself, when they have completed the assigned course of United States history, and in it found not one word of credit, not one word of favorable comment for even one among the millions of his fore-parents who have lived through nearly three centuries of his country's history. ”

“ THE INDIAN AND HER BABY I have elsewhere spoken of the Indian woman’s reception of her child. It is welcomed with joy, and yet in its first hour’s treatment most white women would think its life would terminate. After seeing that it breathes properly—that is, through the nose—the mother carries her little one to the nearest creek or water-hole and gives it a good bath. Cold water has no terrors for her, and she does not fear its use for the child. ”

“ Bull, how little we white people do understand of the black man’s soul? Perhaps a child can see farther into it than we can. What is the saying—‘a little child shall lead them,’ is it not? Perhaps we do not make enough allowances. ”

“ My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white
White as an angel is the English child:
But I am black as if bereav'd of light. ”

“ They come home from school to a house that is closed. There is no one to receive them, and that, with a child, is always a very serious matter. The environment in which they live is not equal to the environment of the white girls. In these homes lack of privacy is greater than in the homes of the same class of white girls, therefore making life much more difficult and temptations more numerous. ”

“ Worden are not faddists. They are earnestly and steadfastly endeavoring to fulfill the trust committed to them, to develop their children into strong healthy women, to strengthen their powers of endurance, and develop their physical faculties by bringing them up in accordance with all the laws of health.”
Another thing that I would have white women learn from their Indian sisters, is a thing they used to know but are rapidly forgetting. That is, the joy of suckling their own children. An Indian mother that does not suckle her own child is almost unknown. ”

“ It seems unjust and unchristian to eject two such children from my school, because their mother has the misfortune to have a few drops of African blood in her veins. I cannot make up my mind to do it. Why, you yourself must admit that they are as white as any children in the room."
"I am willing to acknowledge they are; but they have nigger blood in them, notwithstanding; and they are, therefore, as much niggers as the blackest, and have no more right to associate with white children than if they were black as ink. I have no more liking for white niggers than for black ones." ”

“ THE INDIAN AND CERTAIN SOCIAL TRAITS AND CUSTOMS In the treatment of younger children by those who are older, the white race may learn much from the Indian. While it must be confessed that Indian youth are cruel to the lower animals, I have never seen, in twenty-five years, an older child ill-treat a younger one. There seems to be an instinctive “mothering” of the little ones. The houses of the Hopis are built on the edges of frightful precipices, to fall from which would be sure and certain death ”

“ In case a colored school was not provided, the colored children should be allowed to attend the regular white school. When the colored child had reached a grade higher than that taught in the colored school, he must be admitted to the regular high school, and no distinction therein should be made on account of race or color. In 1882, there were only about six Negro children in a certain district, and the trustees were indicted for not establishing a separate school for them. ”

“ The inner man, like the negro, is born white, but is colored by the life he lives; but not one is so black they have not felt humbled and rebuked under the clear and open countenance of a child. Who has not felt his impurities the more that he was in the presence of a sinless child? ”

“ It unfortunately happens, however, that the predilection thus shown for negresses and those dark women who are nearest allied to the negro race, frequently exposes the white mother’s child to a series of evils, such as imperfect nutrition, contamination of blood, and permanent constitutional injury, all originating in the peculiar circumstances and individual character of milk-nurses; of whom a single child may have been so unfortunate as to have had as many as half a dozen, and to have suffered successively from the blemishes of each. ”

“ A white baby, for family reasons, is left in a negro cabin, to be brought up as a negro child and until the age of nineteen, to believe herself of negro blood. Then a dying and repentent grandfather restores her to her name and position and she is free to cross the line into the white world. ”

“ A Negro child is born white; the skin round the nails, the nipples, and private parts, first become colored; and the same consent of parts in the disposition to color is observable in other nations. A hundred children are a trifle to a Negro ”

“ With this cold bath the child may be said to enter its earthly existence. Henceforth life is to be a succession of hardening processes. Indian babies get no foolish and weakening coddling. They are loved dearly and petted often, but are made to lie down on flat boards or basket cradles, with arms and legs strapped down, and are thus early accustomed to physical restraint. They sleep out of doors from the day of their birth, and become accustomed to all kinds of weather. For an Indian child who has taken cold we shall look in vain. ”

“ But the negro child, even when reared in a white family under the most favor- able conditions, fails to take on the mental and moral character- istics of the Caucasian race. His mental attitudes toward persons and things, toward organized society, toward life, and toward religion never become quite the same as those of the white. ”

“ The state law declared that any city or incorporated village might establish separate schools for the instruction of African youths, provided the facilities were equal to those of white schools, and when, in 1862, a colored parent brought a case against the city for forcing her child to go to a colored school, the case was lost. ”

“ I believe in education; I believe in schools, in colleges, in universities, in teachers, professors, and doctors of learning; but I do not believe in them as most of the white race seem 139 to do, viz., as good in themselves. They are good only as they are instruments for good to the children committed to their care. The proper education of one child is worth more to the world than all the schools, colleges, and universities that were ever built. ”

“ But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. ”

“ Most teachers agreed that there was little friction so far as school work was concerned, even when it meant sitting next to one another or in the same seats. Most kindergarten teachers found the most natural relationship existing between the young Negro and white children. "Neither colored nor whites have any feeling in our kindergarten," said one principal in a school 30 per cent Negro (Webster) ; "they don't understand the difference between colored and white children." ”

“ 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? ”

“ The most striking difference in the health of the colored children compared to that of the white children in the same neighborhood was the larger proportion of the cases of rickets, due of course to malnutrition and neglect. The colored people themselves believe the school authorities are more interested in a school whose patronage is predominantly white. ”

“ Many people intimately acquainted with the race assert that, although about as quick and receptive as white children up to twelve or fourteen years of age, the negro children advance no further; that their minds thenceforward show an arrested development. ”

“ In visiting one school the investigator noticed that the white children who objected to holding hands with the Negro children in the kindergarten and first and second grades were the better-dressed children who undoubtedly reflected the economic class and race consciousness of their parents. ”

“ The above is the story of that wonderful black man told in splendid terms of high and well-deserved praise by a white man. Every little black boy in America may well be fired with inspiration to do something beyond the ordinary by reading the story of Banneker’s life.
LXXV.
“A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM.” It is truly astonishing what a boy can do when once he has made up his mind to do his best. Dr. Len. G. Broughton, the famous pastor of the Tabernacle Baptist church, Atlanta, Ga., in a little book, which he calls “The Modern Prodigal,” has told a very pathetic story about a little boy. ”

“ On stormy days the children of a family are likely to be alone—unless they are so fortunate as to have a little visitor in the house, or a friend who lives near wraps up and comes to play with them. A child who is alone can read, or find in the other chapters of this book some absorbing occupation; for a party of children there are always plenty of games, but it is sometimes difficult to think of a game that two or three will enjoy. ”