 | WHAT MAKES THE COLOR LINE? The Negro question |  |
WHAT MAKES THE COLOR LINE?
The popular assumption that a certain antagonism
between the white and black races is
natural, inborn, ineradicable, has never been
scientifically proved or disproved. Even if it
were, that would not necessarily fix a complete
and sufficient rule of conduct. To be governed
merely by instincts is pure savagery. All
civilization is the result of the subordination of
instinct to reason, and to the necessities of peace,
amity and righteousness. To surrender to instinct
would destroy all civilization in three days.
If, then, the color line is the result of natural
instincts, the commonest daily needs of the
merest civilization require that we should ask
ourselves, is it better or worse to repress or cherish
this instinct and this color line? Wherein
and how far is its repression, or its maintenance,
the better? If we decide that in civil and political
matters the color line is bad, the next question
must be, who makes the color line in politics,
and what will break it? The fact is, certain
men are continually swinging between two statements:
First, that the color line in everything
else but politics is an imperative necessity; and,
of all their trouble, and is drawn by the black
man, against the white man's choice. But politics
is not and cannot be a thing by itself; without
the other provinces of life, politics is no more
than the ciphers of an arithmetical number.
Politics is what we do or propose to do in and
for the various relations of public society. So,
then, no progress can be made in the solution of
Southern troubles until we settle the question,
not who makes, but what makes the color line
in politics. For, obviously, one set of people
may be compelled to draw a line in politics for
which another set of people is morally responsible.
But when we settle what draws the color
line in politics, we are preparing ourselves to say
whether the line need be drawn or not. However,
to inquire carefully who draws the color
line, may be the easiest way to demonstrate what
draws it. Let us point out the strictly artificial
character of certain things, now existing and
active, which would compel the drawing of race
lines by any race under heaven that might be
subjected to them.
Some of these, says a recent Southern writer,
are just as strictly of white men's own making
as they are artificial. To deny, abridge or jeopardize
a negro's right to vote, to hold office, to
around him on the same terms as others,
without any consideration of his own individual
values—good, bad or indifferent—except that he
is an individual of a certain race, is making an
entirely artificial and irrelevant use of a limited
natural distinction. But, says this writer, the
Negroes obtained all these "cardinal and essential
rights in spite of our [Southern white men's]
most determined and bitter opposition." Speaking
as an old citizen of Virginia, he says that the
poll-tax as a qualification for voting was a measure
aimed solely at the negro, and was finally
abolished because it was found to keep more
whites than blacks from the polls. In North Carolina,
by laws expressly and avowedly enacted for
that purpose, the form of government is centralized,
the county officers are appointed by the
Governor, and the Negroes are deprived of the
local self-government which county majorities of
their race might give them. In South Carolina,
the system of electoral machinery is especially
and confessedly designed, and effectually operated,
to deprive the Negroes of a voice in politics.
He quotes from a leading Southern newspaper,
that "as long as a white man capable of holding
office can be found, no negro, however worthy
and capable, shall be appointed."
The Negroes never did and do not now draw
a strict color line in politics. Even in reconstruction
days, when everything favored Negro
supremacy, the Negroes generally entrusted the
public offices of county and State to white men.
And speaking for Virginia, even as late as 187882,
when the party of which the Negroes were
the main strength had absolute control of the
State, almost every office, from United States
Senator to clerks in the State Capitol, were given
to white men, and white men were elected to
Congress, and to the State Legislature, by unquestioned
Negro majorities. Even to this day,
in the so-called "Black Counties," the negroes
generally yield to the whites all but the smallest
and least desirable offices. "Whatever their other
defects," says the writer quoted, "the Negroes, as
a rule, have sense enough to select for officeholders
the best whites they can find in their
own party, and in default of them they select the
best Democrats obtainable." If the negroes are
too ignorant to fill the offices themselves, surely
no better testimony than this to their wisdom
and public spirit could be asked for. And if they
do this because of their own incompetency to
govern, all the more from this example, Southern
white people "should dismiss, as unmanly and
unwarrantable, the fear that ruin and disaster
blacks."
The adherence of the Negro to what the South
calls the "Radical" party is the only result that
could be expected, in view of the attitude of the
two parties in the South toward him. The one
gave him freedom and citizenship, and promises,
at least, to do what it can to secure him in the
exercise of his rights. The other still says to
him not only that he belongs to a degraded and
inferior race, but that in all his public relations
he must be judged and treated according to his
race's merits and demerits, while his white fellow-citizen
monopolizes the ennobling liberty of being
judged and treated according to what he is himself.
"With these facts before us, how can we
expect the Negroes to be anything but our political
opponents and the adherents of our political
adversaries?"
"To break this dark and ominous color line,
rests with us; but we can only obliterate it by
treating the Negroes with equity and impartiality,
and by according them cheerfully all the
rights that we ourselves enjoy."
The sum is this:—
1. That where the color line is drawn arbitrarily
and artificially in any merely civil relation
in the South, it is drawn by the white man.
2. That even by the white man the black
man is not charged with drawing the color line
contrary to the white man's wish, save only in
politics.
3. That even in politics the black man draws
the color line only where any man would draw
it if he were colored; that is, only against those
white men who draw the color line inexorably
in every other public relation.
Why, then, in strictly public relations should
not this incalculably expensive color line be
removed?
| WHAT MAKES THE COLOR LINE? The Negro question | |