The basis of racial adjustment

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Chapter I Mutual Service

There is now a much more substantial agreement on many of the so-called Negro problems than there has been in the past. Doctor Edgar Gardner Murphy, writing in 1904, said: ‘‘ Because no ten men have ever yet agreed as to what we shall all do, the Negro presents something more than a task; he presents a problem.” The lapse of twenty years has marked a genuinely encouraging tendency to dispel this disagreement. Not ten, but ten thousand men agree that the Negro must have equal justice in the courts, must receive training for life in the complex democracy of the United States, must be instructed and safeguarded in the preservation of health, and must receive a square deal in economic life. This substantial agreement is rapidly replacing the intellectual confusion which followed the Civil War.

RAcIAL ADJUSTMENT A TASK

Prediction of the future status of the Negro may still be looked upon as a problem in guessing, but, for present situations, the Golden Rule offers a formula for constructive action which covers the ground as adequately to-day as it

I did two thousand years ago, and seemingly will continue to be effective in meeting future situations as they arise. Snap predictions of the future course of race relations have a habit of going astray. Whatever the future may hold, it is probable that the grandchildren and the greatgrandchildren of the present generation will be far wiser in their time than their forebears; and in this wisdom they will be able to take care of themselves if they can only inherit a tradition of justice and sound ethics.

But individual agreement as to the justice of a policy does not immediately translate itself into community action. This is a process requiring material and moral resources. When it is agreed that the Negro needs schooling, there remains the task of supplying the funds, erecting the buildings, and manning them with competent teachers. Similarly when any ideal of racial adjustment is agreed upon, there remains the task of embodying the ideal into an effective program of community development. While the problematical features of the Negro’s adjustment to life in American communities have diminished, the task of finding sufficient power and sufficient resources to accomplish the adjustment remains.

As doubts concerning the wisdom of constructive efforts have been dispelled, many more people have shown willingness to put their shoulders to the wheel of the vehicle of race relations whose heavy load has been brought over a road choked with obstacles. The tasks are being approached in a more determined spirit as more leaders volunteer for duty and as more resources are made available. This task of racial adjustment of white and Negro relationships is the greatest of all racial tasks in area, as well as in numbers involved. It is also the most intense, because the differences between white people and Negroes are greater than between any other American groups.

AMALGAMATION OR COOPERATION ?

It is often stated that when two races have lived side by side in the same area, under the same government, history has recorded only three results — extermination of the weaker, slavery, or amalgamation. Many people, therefore, think that only these three are possible. They believe that Booker Washington’s ideal of the continuance of the white and colored races in the United States ‘‘as separate as the fingers, yet as united as the hand” is merely an impractical figure of speech. These people overlook the success of the Jews and Gypsies in maintaining racial integrity in many lands. No one affirms that the preservation of the racial integrity of the Jew is a denial of democratic principles. Democracy does not demand the fusion of races any more than it demands the fusion of religions.

Nor does history offer as a precedent any nation including two groups so numerous and so widely divergent in physical characteristics and position in the cultural scale as the white man and the Negro in the United States. Again, at no time recorded in history has such a wealth of spiritual and intellectual effort been directed toward the cultivation of satisfactory race relations as to-day. These conditions may make it possible for the ten million Negroes and the hundred odd million white people to dwell peacefully together without the tremendous social cost of amalgamation, each making its own peculiar contribution to the development of the United States.

INTERRACIAL MORALITY AND DEPENDENCE

Communities in which white and colored people live side by side need codes of race morals and programs of interracial action which will preserve American traditions and institutions, and, at the same time, allow a square deal to the colored people, and give them full opportunity to develop their capabilities and to contribute their share to the well-being and progress of the country. When communities permit prejudice or violence to prevent the law from protecting the life of the humblest citizen and from guaranteeing the integrity of the poorest home, they are as guilty as the individual who fails to control the passions which lead to the murder of a weaker neighbor. The taxation of colored people to pay a bond issue which is spent entirely for the erection of white public schools is just as dishonest in a community as the activity of the highwayman who, with the aid of a bludgeon, converts your cash to his own uses. These are the types of action to be avoided by interracial codes.

Aside from the dictates of morality, community selfinterest demands a program of just and efficient interracial action. Experience has shown that in communities which neglect the legal protection of colored people, a class of white people is soon bred whose disrespect for the law passes beyond violence to colored people into acts which menace any weak citizen. By neglecting the education of colored people, lack of training is permitted to fasten the burdens of ignorance and inefficiency on all the people; by neglecting the living conditions and health of any of the citizens, disease zones are fostered which persistently menace the health of the whole community. To arrange community affairs so that these things will not occur because of the neglect of the Negro population is the challenging task of the hour for the rising generation.

COOPERATION INCREASING

The most encouraging recent development in dealing with this task is to be found in rapid progress of the tendency to codperate in working out interracial affairs, rather than to leave them to the outcome of bickering and struggle. The events of the Civil War and Reconstruction, with the inevitable wave of suffering, passion, and bitterness which flooded in their wake, virtually enthroned intolerance, and rendered codperation between white and black and between North and South most difficult. But time, the great healer, has changed things so rapidly that intellectually honest persons can think together and, to an extent, work together for the improvement of many conditions affecting the two races.

There are still obdurate individuals, with more zeal than wisdom, who think that they alone could direct this great task of racial adjustment. In the North this phenomenon occurs in the man who can see nothing good in the South’s dealings with the Negro, and who accepts any unverified rumor of wholesale slaughter of Negroes as typical of the attitude of all Southerners. In the South it occurs in the individual who thinks that it is not the ‘‘Yankee’s”’ business to concern himself with colored people, and in the man whose dignity would never suffer him to consult with Negroes as to any policy. Among the Negroes, obduracy is manifested in a few who distrust white people in the aggregate and are suspicious of any advice or service, lest it contain a concealed degradation. But, fortunately, the relative influence of all three of these classes is waning before the growing power of codperative groups which are successfully at work.

Many students of history get the impression that the relations between nations and races have been based largely on greed and conquest, and overlook the fact that the years between wars have been the fruitful seasons blessed by the development of the special abilities of many peoples to produce a variety of goods and services and exchange them peacefully with others, making bargains whereby both parties were benefited. Without such codperation no division of highly specialized labor or of peculiarly valuable cultural and moral services would have been possible. The time of each nation or race would have been consumed with struggle to produce and keep the bare necessities. Thus through coéperation, the ethical and moral efforts of man have ever been more fruitful and more progressive than his rapacious conquests.

Full-flowered codperation is a system wherein mutual aid is freely and spontaneously given because it is mutually beneficial. This codperation is probably more perfectly illustrated in some of our humanized industrial plants than anywhere else. It is possible only through the exercise of intelligence, fairness, and the strictest morality; but even in its imperfect stages it enables men to divide and specialize the tasks of life so that not only is the effort to produce the necessities lessened, but the products are also improved. Men’s minds are released from fear and their energies released from unnecessary competition and struggle, thereby creating a great surplus of time and energy which can be devoted to the adaptation of nature’s soil, minerals, and climate to the comfort of man, and adaptation of man’s own organizations and institutions to progress.

It is this latter road to full-fledged codperation which is now open to the white people and the colored people of the United States. Their relationships have always been governed by principles of mutual aid in varying forms. Slavery has been tried and discarded by the white people themselves as inimical to their interests and inconsistent with their democracy. The paternalistic relationship, which characterized the plantation area until long after the Civil War, is passing as the large plantations fall into decay. As the Negro emerges from the plantation system and becomes an independent owner and renter of land and a city dweller with a measure of the white man’s store of learning, he approaches the place where he canstand side by side with his white neighbor and work for the harmonious progress of the two races.

But there still remains the task of providing the ways and means for this codperation and of enabling the Negro to live up to this opportunity to fit into American life. It is the greatest opportunity which has ever been presented to so large a number of colored people. It carries with it also a grave responsibility on the part of the Negro to meet it soberly and earnestly and to do his full share in harmonizing the interests of the masses of his race with those of the whole nation and in leading these masses away from ignorance and inefficiency.

THE NATURE OF RACIAL DIFFERENCES

Much has been written by biologists and anthropologists concerning the physical differences between the races. The question of whether these differences indicate a superiority of certain races and inferiority of others has been widely agitated. One school declares for a strict racial equality, at least a potential equality ; while the other claims that racial differences are fixed and are transmitted from generation to generation, giving the possessor of superior qualities a perpetual superiority.

It might clarify the mind of a student torn between the claims of these two schools to realize that these scientists do not deal with the whole scale of human difference. Individuals may differ physically, mentally, culturally, or morally. The biologist is primarily interested in physical difference, secondarily in mental difference, and hardly interested at all in cultural and moral differences. But these cultural and spiritual factors are by far the most powerful in determining human situations; for, in organized society, it is more important to know how men will react to a common danger or a common opportunity than it is to know the angle of their faces or the thickness of their lips. The transmission of the cultural traits from generation to generation does not follow the laws of biological heredity at all. They are transmitted through social institutions. While the difference in the nasal index or head shape of two groups may be relatively fixed by heredity, the different reactions of an educated man and an ignorant man to a problem in compound interest or a public health © situation may be equalized by education. This forces us to conclude that in dealing with human situations our ethics is of more use than our biology.

Even in regard to physical traits, however, biological research indicates that while individuals may differ widely, it is very difficult to classify rigidly the large groups of individuals which are known as races. It is difficult to find any trait or group of traits which separates them widely. Even skin color is a deceptive criterion, for there are black Jews and blond Indians. Within the white race there are varying degrees of blondness and among the African peoples there are wide varieties of blackness and brownness. Similarly when such traits as height, brain weight, keenness of vision or acuteness of hearing are measured, it is found that while the averages of the races differ slightly, the individual members of each race vary widely about the average. Thus while the average height of Japanese is low, the tallest Japanese are considerably taller than the shortest white men.

Even the physical criteria of race are not separate pigeonholes into which individuals may be sorted and separated. They are slightly differing averages about which the individual members of the races vary so widely that there is much overlapping between the groups. This overlapping is due first to the fact that the essential equipment of humanity has always been much the same, and further to the fact that to-day there is no such thing as a pure race. Humanity differentiated into racial stocks in different isolated areas, but later wars, migrations, and voyages of discovery have brought about contacts and intermingling which have tended to equalize the original differences. The Tartar migrations and the infiltration of European business and missions into the Orient have mixed the white and yellow people. The contacts of Egypt and Phcenicia with Africa and the Arab migrations have made the so-called black race a varied group, and the hundreds of migrations and wars in Europe have caused a crossing and recrossing that have resulted in a highly complex stock.

It is also found that the differences in physical traits tend to change when races change their environment. Studies of the head form of immigrant children seem toindicate that the head form of the children tends to conform more closely to the average of the new environment than that of the parents.

Finally, in regard to physical and mental traits it is well to remember that even though the inheritance of the individual may be roughly fixed by biological heredity, this inheritance is so complex and includes so many possible combinations that the individual in a favorable environment has the power to make a good product out of a relatively poor inheritance, or, on the other hand, to deteriorate into a parasite in spite of a relatively rich inheritance.

The cultural differences between the world’s peoples as they exist to-day are probably more marked than the physical and mental differences, but they are yielding more rapidly to the increasing ease of communication. In considering these differences the outstanding fact is that they are rooted in the common heritage of humanity, — a control over nature, and an ability for social organization. No one race was the exclusive inventor ofits culture and hence none is its exclusive owner.

Written language, which is the greatest aid to social efficiency, originated with forgotten peoples, and the modern alphabet, which renders the language of the white man so efficient, is a gift from the Phcenicians; while the numerical system which is the basis of the highly developed mathematical system of the white man is a product of the Arab mind; and the origins of the wheel and the lever, those fundamental parts of modern mechanics, are lost in the dimness of the dawn of history.

MUTUAL SERVICE II

To summarize: When the difference between men and the higher animals is considered, racial differences appear as slight differences in the average of human groups, about which individual members vary so widely that it is almost impossible to predicate a fixed criterion of race. Furthermore, these averages and the amount of variation change from time to time and place to place. The cultural differences, which form the truly important divisions of mankind, are not the exclusive heritage of any one race, and can, to a large degree, be equalized by the processes of education.

This evidence from the research of scientists is, therefore, not such as to warrant the assumption of an inborn, ineradicable superiority of one race over all others. Nevertheless it seems to be a human trait to assume such superiority. There are many peoples who arrogate it to themselves. That certain individuals are superior to others is undeniable, that certain groups contain a larger proportion of these superior individuals than others is probable, that certain peoples have been favored by environmental factors and cultural history is certain. But to assume that every member of an advantaged group is superior to every member of a disadvantaged group is a blind error, and the assumption that group differences are fixed and ineradicable for all time is equally as mistaken. It is desirable frankly to recognize the differences as they actually exist, but there is absolutely no ethical justification for the assumption that an advantaged group has an inherent right to exploit and oppress, and the prejudice based upon such assumptions is the most vicious enemy to human peace and cooperation.

The ethical attitude to assume toward the relation of races is, therefore, one which recognizes the worth and merit of individual personalities wherever they are found, and which fosters the development of a social system which will give all peoples the chance to assimilate the common culture of humanity and codperate for the common progress of mankind.

RaActAL DIFFERENCES HELP SPECIALIZATION

Fortunately racial differences are no bar to codperation, but rather, when they are useful differences, they are actually helpful. If all men were exactly alike, specialization would not be so effective as it is when special abilities can be developed and put to work for special ends. To argue, therefore, that the Negro and the white man are very different, is a point in favor of, rather than against, their codperation. As long as their fundamental interests in a prosperous and progressive democracy are the same, their useful differences will enable them to render valuable mutual aid.

Fifty years of freedom have not been nearly sufficient to discover just what the special aptitudes of the Negro are. There is reason to suppose, however, that he has ability to contribute to American life in music, art, and probably in the drama. His folk music is in a class by itself. Some of its pathos and some of its jazz have gained currency in American tunes. The pictures of Tanner, the stories made famous by Uncle Remus, the poetry of Dunbar, the essays of Fisher, the perfect buffoonery of Bert Williams, the powerful emotional acting of Gilpin, and the songs of Roland Hayes, are all indicative of the promise of the future.

It may be, also, that from his long and absorbing contact with natural forces, the Negro will have his own peculiar contribution to make to the development of the natural sciences. Benjamin Banneker, an astronomer of note, is credited with having fashioned one of the first clocks made in America. George W. Carver to-day has gained international reputation for his peculiar genius in the chemical analysis of the homely things close at hand, and their adaptation to useful purposes. From the peanut, potato, pecan, and native clays of Alabama, he has produced a bewildering series of more than three hundred products. It is certain that the colored man has some special contribution to make to American life if he only bestirs himself to develop his own peculiar strong points and is aided by the white man to develop these capabilities and find places where they fit into the scheme of American progress.

MutTuaL ACQUAINTANCE

The essentials of effective codperation between the races are mutual acquaintance, mutual confidence, and mutual interests. Even in the South where the races are in closest contact, mutual acquaintance, or the possession by each race of knowledge as to the real facts concerning the other, is by no means widespread. Notwithstanding the assertion so often made in the South that ‘““We know all about the Negro,”’ it is safe to venture that only a very small proportion of the white people know the general, present-day conditions well. Tradition and prejudice, the ancient enemies of scientific knowledge, operate so powerfully in race questions that the facts are often obscured. The slaveholders of the old South knew the Negroes well because they were in intimate contact with them, and because Negroes were, in those days, a comparatively simple group, almost totally illiterate, bound to the soil, and tutored by the owners themselves. To-day the ex-slaveholder, or the slaveholder’s son, knows the tradition as to what the Negro was sixty years ago, which is vastly different from what the Negro is to-day. Or perchance, if he farms with Negro labor, he knows the Negro farm hand of to-day, who is a vastly different man from the city dweller. The great class of Negro leaders, — business men, teachers, preachers, and doctors, — are altogether out of touch with the white people. Nine out of ten white men do not number a single one of these among their personal acquaintances.

To quote from Dr. Edgar Gardner Murphy’s ‘‘ The Present South”:

We may be tempted to say, therefore, that the kindlier conception of the old-time Negro resulted from the fact that the white world at its best was looking upon the Negro at his best; the harsher conception of the present Negro resulting

_ from the fact that a white world which is not its best is looking upon the Negro at his worst.

The first task of codperation is, therefore, the cultivation . of a mutual acquaintance based upon accurate knowledge. Each race needs to give more sober thought to the other and needs painstakingly to separate facts from dogma and demagoguery. This is a process of study and the cultivation of friendly contacts. It is impossible to overstate the need for real facts as a basis for action.

One thing which is essential to the appreciation of the facts concerning race relations is the dynamic viewpoint. A sense of the value of the time element is necessary. The civic and economic status of the Negro to-day is vastly different from what it was fifty years ago. As the civic and economic life of the race changes, race relations change.

No one can afford to dogmatize as to the present on the basis of the facts of the past. No one can afford to predict the future without a very thorough knowledge of the present-day trends.

In addition to the dynamic viewpoint the constructive viewpoint is essential. —The programs which stimulate progress must be based upon the constructive forces at work. It is necessary to know the organizations and institutions which are successfully approaching the task of improving race relations and the principles upon which their success is based. Such a dynamic and constructive analysis of the facts is fundamental to the mutual acquaintance which codperation demands.

This kind of knowledge is most essential for the rising generation of colored people to-day, for it is the usual experience of belated races that, when they begin to rise in the scale of knowledge and begin to comprehend the extent of their backwardness, they are engulfed in self-pity, which may embitter or may greatly discourage them. Public opinion among colored people in the United States is to-day in this critical stage. Sometimes the Negro ascribes to prejudice conditions which arise, at least partially, from his own backwardness. This tendency is seen in the discontent with the tenant system which is as much the result of the ignorance and improvidence of farm labor as it is of abuses by unscrupulous landlords. The Negro also sometimes blames racial injustice for conditions which are common to all races and classes occupying a similar economic or social status. Much of the hardship imposed on the Negro in court proceedings is shared by the friendless, moneyless white man. In other words, a proper perspective on the facts shows that many of the difficulties of the Negro are not racial but are inherent in the economic, political, and judicial systems of the United States or in the condition of the Negro, and can improve only as these improve.

This is a process which takes time. Social progress is not the product of sudden changes but of a multitude of gradual improvements with an occasional revolutionary reorganization. It is therefore especially important for Negroes in their present state of mind to appreciate fully the time element in racial adjustment. The impartial student of the facts of Negro life in America will find much that is genuinely encouraging and practically nothing to warrant a feeling of hopelessness. Analysis of the successful constructive movements will show that in the interest of getting results the colored people should guard against self-pity and undue impatience.

MuvtTuUAL CONFIDENCE

Mutual confidence can come only after fear and jealousy, which is a corollary of fear, have been dispelled. The most fallacious of fears arise from the feeling that what is the Negro’s gain must of necessity be the white man’s loss. As a matter of fact there is ample opportunity in America for both. Many are the out-worn fears of the past concerning the Negro. Former discussions of Negro education involved fears that it would lead to vanity in life; that it would spoil a good field hand by teaching books; and some even went so far as to predict that learning would only make the Negro an arch criminal. Those who are familiar with the records of the thousands of Negro graduates who are proving their worth to-day know the absurdity of these past fears. Of course, few of these graduates go back to work on the farm for twenty dollars a month, but their good influence as community leaders reflects back upon those who do remain. It would be almost impossible to find one whose efficiency has not been increased by training, and it is relatively rare that a trained Negro is accused of crime.

Such groundless fears as these must go, for as long as there is fear there will be distrust and stifling oppression. The mutual confidence which must replace fear is to be based on the knowledge that each race is genuinely and sympathetically interested in the other, and that both are deeply concerned with the progress of their common country. This mutual confidence cannot be conjured from the air by thought or will power. It comes through experience and can be cultivated by beginning to work together in a sympathetic and earnest spirit. In this respect the best way to learn codperation is to begin to codperate on simple, everyday matters.

MUuTUAL INTERESTS

The mutual interests essential to codperation between white and black in the United States are so obvious that they need not be dwelt upon. The two races living side by side are so intimately connected that it is difficult to find a point at which one may be affected without also affecting the other. All community activities — government, farming, business, education, religion, health, and humane care of the unfortunates— are complicated by reason of the presence of two races, both of which need the same kind of community work. Thus the tasks of racial adjustment cross-section the tasks of democracy. The maximum advancement for either race is conditioned by the advancement of the other. Their mutual interests are too vital to be left to debate and conflict. They are big enough to deserve approach in the great spirit of mutual aid.

Boaz, Franz. The Mind of Primitive Man, Chapters IX and X.

BRYCE, JAMES. Relations of the Advanced to the Backward Races of Mankind. Romanes Lectures, 1902.

Handbook of Interracial Codperation. Commission on Interracial Coéperation, Atlanta, Georgia.

Murpuy, E. G.. The Present South, pp. 160-171.

OrtpHAM, J. H. Christianity and the Race Problem, Chapters IV, V, and VI.

WASHINGTON, B. T. Address before the Atlanta Exposition — Up from Slavery, Chapter XIV; The Story of the Negro, Chapter XV.

WEATHERFORD, W. D. The Negro from Africa to America, Chapter XV.

WHITE and JAcKSoNn. Poetry by American Negroes.

1. Compare the relative importance, in the United States, of the following groups, considering in each case relative numbers and cultural differences: Indians, Mongolians, Mexicans, other foreign born, Negroes. Make this comparison for a single state.

2. How do racial differences aid in the division of labor and the distribution of social burdens?

1 These bibliographies at the end of each chapter are suggestive rather than exhaustive. No periodical matter is included, and, as much valuable material has appeared in magazines, the reader who desires to go exhaustively into a subject should consult the Periodical Guides. The aim has been to include the most suggestive reading for beginners, confining the references as far as possible to books which should be available in average college and city libraries. Two books not specifically mentioned but which are valuable as references for statistics on all topics are the Negro Year Book, published annually by Tuskegee Institute, and a special report of the United States Census Bureau entitled Negro Population in the United States, 1790-1915. The latter will, of course, have to be supplemented by reference to the 1920 census. An exhaustive bibliography is given in the Negro Year Book.