University of Virginia Library

A Vital Question

A very vital question for all mankind is, Can attitudes be changed? According to the findings of science, they can be. Miss Julia Wade Abbott, director of kindergartens in Philadelphia and chairman of the Kindergarten committee for President Hoover's council says, "Experiments with kindergarten children show that no racial hatred exists until implanted by grown people." If so strong an attitude as racial hatred can be bred from without, other attitudes can be created. Prof. Emory S. Bogardus, of the University of Southern California, says, "Personal and social progress is a matter of changing attitudes. If we can find out how to change attitudes we shall have the key to progress. "He also says, "Since race prejudice is a sentiment, it is an acquired trait and since it is an acquired trait, it may be controlled and prevented to a surprising degree."

The social sciences demonstrate that within certain limitations human nature may be changed. The paramount duty before the Negro race is that of finding out

what changes are needed in the prevailing Negro mentality to cause it to fit more harmoniously into American civilization, and or addressing itself to the task of making the needed changes. The transformed groups of mankind, the English, the German and the Japanese beckon to the America Negro to join them in their great achievement of psychological transformation.

There are colored people in the United States, many of them, who meet all the requirements herein set forth and all other tests of good citizenship. Out of this fact we get the satisfaction that the troubles are not biological or beyond the reach of efforts. Through the banding together of this element the entire race may be redeemed.