White man

“ Why, on the broad and ample fields of this continent, whose larger expanses are still in a wild state, have not the red man and the white man consented to keep apart, leaving each other alone, each to his own preferred way of life? ”

“ And it is not merely the demand of the white man that the Negro step aside by himself, for the Negro himself is drawing the colour line, and drawing it with as much enthusiasm as the white man. A genuine race-spirit or race-consciousness is developing. Negroes are meeting prejudice with self-development. ”

“ Tell us; which is the white man, who, with a prudent regard to his own character, can associate one of you on terms of equality? Ask us which is the white man who would decline such association with one of our number, whose intellectual and moral qualities are not an objection? To both of these questions we unhesitatingly make the same answer: there is no such white man. ”

“ And we are not yet two decades from the surrender of Robert E. Lee and the manumission of the black slave.
I have no disposition to infuriate any white man of the South, by placing a red flag before him; we simply desire to accustom him to look upon a picture which his grand-children will not, because of the frequency of the occurrence, regard with anything more heart-rending than complacent indifference. The world moves forward; and the white man of the South could not stand still, if he so desired. Like the black man, he must work, or perish ”

“ The white man comes, pale as the dawn, with a load of thought, with a slumbering intelligence as a fire raked up, knowing well what he knows, not guessing but calculating; strong in community, yielding obedience to authority; of experienced race; of wonderful, wonderful common sense; dull but capable, slow but persevering, severe but just, of little humor but genuine; a laboring man, despising game and sport; building a house that endures, a framed house. ”

“ There are those among the white race and those among the black race who assert, with a good deal of earnestness, that there is no difference between the white man and the black man in this country. This sounds very pleasant and tickles the fancy; but, when the test of hard, cold logic is applied to it, it must be acknowledged that there is a difference,—not an inherent one, not a racial one, but a difference [Pg 32] growing out of unequal opportunities in the past. ”

“ but no white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man's clothes, eats the white man's food, speaks the white man's language, and professes the white man's religion. ”

“ I remember the first white man I ever saw. Since that long, long-ago time I have seen many, but never until now have I ever truly known and felt a white man’s heart. All the white men I have heretofore met wanted to get something from us. ”

“ It was a paper in which the white man was extolled as the master race, and spoke as if it were a privilege for the colored man to be linked to his destiny and to live beneath the shadow of his power. He asserted that the white race of this country is the broadest, most Christian, and humane of that branch of the human family. ”

“ Is it founded on an innate race repulsion? Does the white man necessarily fear and dislike the Negro? The white child does not, nor the lowest stratum of Whites, who are nearest the Negro intellectually and morally. ”

“ When he learns of white people shutting themselves up in houses into which the fresh, pure, free air of the plains and deserts, often laden with the healthful odors of the pines, firs, balsams of the forest, cannot come, he shakes his head at the folly, and feels as one would if he saw a man slamming his door in the face of his best friend. ”

“ One man to four hundred is great odds, I own, But this 'yer's a White Man—I plays it alone!" And he sprang up the hillside—to stop him none dare— Till a yell from the top told a "White Man was there!" A White Man was there! We prayed he might spare Those misguided heathens The few clothes they wear. They fled, and he followed, but no matter where; They fled to escape him,—the "White Man was there,"— Till we missed first his voice on the pine-wooded slope, And we knew for the heathen henceforth was no hope ”

“ Then came upon the scene that ablest and most daring and resolute savage chieftain known in our history. There have been three conspicuous men of the native race, — the towering chieftains of the forest, signal types of all the characteristics of the savage, ennobled, so to speak, by their lofty patriotism, — who have appeared on the scene of action at the three most critical eras for the white man on this continent. If the material and stock of such men are not exhausted, there is no longer for them a sphere, a range, an occasion or opportunity in place or time here. ”

“ The Negro in the United States is consuming all of his intellectual energy in this gruelling race-struggle. And the same statement may be made in a general way about the white South. Why does not the white South produce literature and art? The white South, too, is consuming all of its intellectual energy in this lamentable conflict. Nearly all of the mental efforts of the white South run through one narrow channel. The life of every Southern white man and all of his activities are impassably limited by the ever present Negro problem. ”

“ And, whenever you find a white man who expresses the same sentiment toward the people of other races, there, too, in almost every case, you will find a narrow-minded, prejudiced white man.
That person is the broadest, strongest, and most useful who sees something to love and admire in all races, no matter what their colour. ”

“ To say nothing of its accuracy, may it not have been an unwise thing for you to claim that the black man has risen during thirty years more rapidly in the scale of civilization than the whites have risen in a thousand?
True, you confine yourself to the Italians, the Spaniards, the Russians and the South Americans, but when you say the darkest of all the colored races is superior to that great section of the white race named by you, does it not occur to you that you may create a feeling of resentment among all the whites? ”

“ The idea had dawned upon his master mind that the sovereignty of the wilderness rested with the red men. His intelligent casting of the horoscope of the lowering future for his race led him to seek boldly and consistently to sap the very roots of the threatening calamity for them, by advising them to be no longer dependent on the white man's goods or to cherish any lurking partiality for the white man's habits of life. ”

“ In evaluating these pro-segregation statements by Negroes, the whites rarely distinguish between the uneducated, economically dependent Negro and recognized Negro leadership. Such a mistake results naturally from the Booker T. Washington tradition that the Southern white man is the only true friend of the Negro and has always stood ready to give him assistance and advice in meeting the challenges of the white man’s civilization. ”

“ Furthermore, the native differentiates himself still further in impression from our negro in his carriage and the mental attitude that lies behind it. Our people are trying to pattern themselves on white men, and succeed in giving a more or less shambling imitation thereof. The native has standards, ideas, and ideals that perfectly satisfy him, and that antedated the white man's coming by thousands of years. ”

“ White men built America. The Negro came to our country after the white man did. The white man has always been kind to the Negro. But the white and black people do not live together in the South....
[Those who seek integration] say we are not good if we don’t live together. But we know it is wrong to live together.... They want to make our country weak. Did you know our country will grow weak if we mix our races? ”

“ Much is being said and written on the so-called Negro Problem. Why it has taken this name, I have never been able to decide. For when we examine into its intricacies, we find that it is the White Man’s problem also. And certainly it is true, that if this problem is ever settled in this country on a proper basis, it will be settled when the White and the Colored people come together on some practical basis of agreement. There are more than ten millions of Colored people in this country and they are here to stay. ”

“ No, no. It's because I'm part negro—though I'm quite as white as a number I saw there to-night. Now, mother, exactly how much negro am I? You've told me your father was a white man; but who was your mother, and what do you know about her?"
"Yes, my father was a white man. He was a German just come over to this country. He had a beer saloon in a New Hampshire town—at least he bought it afterwards. He worked in the saloon when my mother, who had run away from Kentucky, was hired to work in his employer's house. ”

“ The Negro seems to be about the only race that has been able to look the white man in the face during the long period of years and live—not only live, but multiply. The Negro has not only done this, but he has had the good sense to get something from the white man at every point where he has touched him—something that has made him a stronger and a better race. ”

“ Foreigners, seeking employment, have gone to the South in large numbers during the last five years, and finding there the typical poor whites, who are the ancient enemies of the Colored people and ever ready to do them harm, have united with them on the color line and raised that old familiar cry that “this is a white man’s country, that white men must and shall rule it; no Negro domination over white men.” ”

“ The Southern white man does see a race danger in these social amenities, Mr. President; for he cannot view amalgamation or the faintest prospect of it with any sentiment save horror: and he fortifies himself against that danger not only with the peculiar pride of race—of which he has a comfortable supply—but with every expedient suggested by his common sense, his experience, and by the horrible example which that distinguished educator's 'Northern white' has furnished him. ”

“ To this statement it will, of course, be replied that, if the only lines of separation between
the negro and the white man are physical, such prepossessions are capricious merely and
should not be countenanced by the enlightened spirit of to-day. ”

“ But, through any and all future time, — when, if it should be so, the red race has vanished, — two very different pleas in relief or vindication of the white man will be offered. We can anticipate those pleas, for they can be no other than are spoken earnestly and urgently in our own present time. ”

“ White men taxed themselves to put an end to the negro’s ignorance and superstition. The white man opened his purse to endow colleges for the negro’s special benefit. The white man opened the door of opportunity to the black, and gave him a chance in every field of human endeavor. ”

“ And yet, in spite of all this, the blacks are to tread the whites in the dust? If, indeed, the nine millions are not enough to stand their ground against the three and a half millions of blacks, we are ready to send them a reinforcement of carpet-baggers to help them maintain their white preponderance. I do not say this jokingly; I am in earnest. Is not every man who emigrates to the South from the Northern States or from Europe, a white man? The negroes do not find the Ku-Klux atmosphere of the South so pleasing as to be attracted by it. ”

“ The white man writes his history for us to study, makes his scenario with his heroes and heroines for us to admire, and supplies our newspapers. Through these instrumentalities he almost entirely controls our thought. ”

“ He continued:
“The Southern white man boasts he knows the Negro better than anybody else, but he knows less what the coloured man is really thinking than the man in the moon. I’ll bet anything you say, that seven out of every ten men in town believe that you and I and all the rest of us coloured folks are scared to death every time we hear the word ‘Ku Klux.’ They believe the sight of one of those fool robes’ll make us run and hide under a bed⸺”
[130] “Oh, I don’t go quite that far,” interrupted Kenneth. ”

“ I have always considered it unfortunate that the Southern white man did not make more of an effort during the period of reconstruction to get the confidence and sympathy of the Negro, and thus have been able to keep him in close touch and sympathy in politics. ”

“ The result of the white man's view of the tenure of the natives to the soil, as we are to attempt to define it, was, — as we see it now over the larger part of this continent, and as coming generations will surely see over the remainder of it, — this, the succession of the civilized white man, or possibly the civilized Indian, to the savage red man in occupying it. ”

“ After all, some very well informed and very well meaning people will read what I have now said, and what seems to me so just and reasonable, and will still insist that the color of the negro has something to do with the feeling entertained toward him; that the white man naturally shudders at the thought of contact with one who is black -- that the impulse is one which he can neither resist nor control. ”

“ From time immemorial it had been bred in the Southern white consciousness, and in the negro consciousness also, for that matter, that the person of a white man was sacred from the touch of a negro, no matter what the provocation. ”

“ My mother’s father was an American white man. Her mother was a full-blooded African woman. What am I?”
Pathetic Desire of Negroes to Be Like White Men
Even among those Negroes who are most emphatic in defence of the race there is, deep down, the pathetic desire to be like the dominant white man. It is not unreasonable, nor unnatural, for all outward opportunity of development lies open to the white man. To be coloured is to be handicapped in the race for those things in life which men call desirable. I remember discussing the race question one evening with a group of intelligent coloured men. ”